


American CommontoeaitJjg 



CONNECTICUT 



STUDY OF A COMMONWEALTH-DEMOCRACY 



ALEXANDER JOHNSTON 

PROFESSOR OF JURISPRUDENCE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 
PRINCETON COLLEGE 



With a Supplementary Chapter by Clive Day, Assistant Professor 
of Economic History in Yale University 




'^XX'H-X^^ 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1903 



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F94 
■3"7 3 



IBRARYOF 

Two Copies fteceVved 

Copyright Entry 
CUSS Cu XXo. Mo 



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Copyright, 1887, 
By ALEXANDER JOHNSTON. 

Copyright, 1903, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 



All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge ', Mass., U. S.A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



To 
TIMOTHY DWIGHT, 

PRESIDENT OF YALE UNIVERSITY. 




Seal IStatuti 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 



In issuing a new edition of Connecticut, it has 
seemed desirable to add a supplementary chapter 
dealing with the history of Connecticut since the 
Civil War. This chapter has been written by 
Clive Day, Assistant Professor of Economic His- 
tory in Yale University. 

4 Park St., September, 1903. 



PREFACE. 



This volume is not meant to deal mainly with 
the antiquarian history of Connecticut, with the 
achievements of Connecticut men and women, or 
with those biographical details which so often 
throw the most instructive side-lights on local his- 
tory. These fields have been explored so thor- 
oughly by abler hands that it would be presump- 
tion for the writer to enter them, unless to take 
advantage of the materials thus stored up. The 
volume is one of a " Commonwealth Series," and 
it aims to take the history of Connecticut from 
another side. Its purpose is to present certain 
features in the development of Connecticut which 
have influenced the general development of the 
State system in this country, and of the United 
States, and may be grouped as follows : — 

I. Connecticut's town system was, by a fortu- 
nate concurrence of circumstances, even more in- 
dependent of outside control than that of Massa- 
chusetts; the principle of local government had 
here a more complete recognition ; and, in the 
form in which it has done best service* its begin- 
ning was in Connecticut. 



Vlll PRE FA CE. 

II. The first conscious and deliberate effort on 
this continent to establish the democratic princi- 
ple in control of government was the settlement 
of Connecticut ; and her constitution of 1639, the 
first written and democratic constitution on rec- 
ord, was the starting-point for the democratic de- 
velopment which has since gained control of all 
our commonwealths, and now makes the essential 
feature of our commonwealth government. 

III. Democratic institutions enabled the people 
of Connecticut to maintain throughout their colo- 
nial history a form of government so free from 
crown control that it became really the exemplar 
of the rights at which all the colonies finally 
aimed. 

IV. Connecticut, being mainly a federation of 
towns, with neither so much of the centrifugal 
force as in Rhode Island, nor so much of the cen- 
tripetal force as in other colonies, maintained for 
a century and a half that union of the democratic 
and federative ideas which has at last come to 
mark the whole United States. 

V. The Connecticut delegates in the conven- 
tion of 1787, by another happy concurrence of cir- 
cumstances, held a position of unusual influence ; 
the frame of their commonwealth government, 
with its equal representation of towns in one 
branch and its general popular representation in 
the other, had given them a training which ena- 
bled them to bend the form of our national con- 



PREFACE. IX 

stitution into a corresponding shape ; and the pe- 
culiar constitution of our congress, in the different 
bases of the senate and house of representatives, 
was thus the result of Connecticut's long main- 
tenance of a federative democracy. 

VI. The first great effort at westward coloniza- 
tion, in the Wyoming country, was managed by 
Connecticut through her traditional system of free 
towns ; and the example is enough to account for 
the subsequent power of this principle in the or- 
ganization of the great Northwest. 

VII. Individual capacity and energy, the natu- 
ral fruit of a democratic system, have enabled the 
people of Connecticut to survive and prosper un- 
der the industrial revolution of later times, and to 
show that a commonwealth almost without natural 
advantages, and forced to rely almost entirely on 
the conversion of foreign products into other forms, 
may reach the highest degree of prosperity through 
the individual mechanical genius of her people. 

For these reasons, the writer thinks that Con- 
necticut has a claim to a high place among char- 
acteristic commonwealths ; and that the antiqua- 
rian, biographical, and other features which usu- 
ally abound in State histories, should in this in- 
stance be made subordinate to the study of her 
democracy and its influences. So far as the usual 
details can be given, and as they illustrate the 
controlling features of the volume, they have been 
used ; but the volume is not bound to them. 



X PREFACE. 

Connecticut migration has been so great that it 
has been necessary to resist an almost constant 
temptation to diverge to the influence of Connecti- 
cut men and ideas in Vermont, New York, New- 
Jersey, Ohio, Michigan, and other commonwealths. 
How large that influence has been is not widely 
known. Hollister states that in 1857 a single 
county (Litchfield) had been the birthplace of thir- 
teen United States senators, twenty-two represen- 
tatives from New York, fifteen supreme court 
judges in other States, nine presidents of colleges 
and eighteen other professors, and eleven gover- 
nors and lieutenant-governors of States. The re- 
mark is attributed to Calhoun that he had seen 
the time when the members of congress born or 
educated in Connecticut lacked but five of being 
a majority. This .must be taken with allowance, 
even if it were exact ; for by no means all those 
educated in Connecticut have done much to carry 
Connecticut characteristics elsewhere. But, with 
all allowance, the foreign influence of Connecti- 
cut has been extraordinary. One must sympa- 
thize with the astonishment of the Frenchman 
who, hearing that this and that distinguished man, 
though a resident of another State, was born in 
Connecticut, went to the library to find the loca- 
tion of the State, and found that it was " nothing 
but a little yellow spot on the map." If there be 
anything in the claims for the work of the Connec- 
ticut commonwealth, they must be still further 



PREFACE. xi 

strengthened by the influence which the children 
of the commonwealth have carried into all sorts 
of channels. 

The original scheme of the Series did not in- 
clude the feature of foot-notes for authorities, and 
the writer followed the plan of putting his author- 
ities into a bibliography. It has not seemed ne- 
cessary to alter the arrangement, and it has been 
retained as an essay toward a bibliography of the 
commonwealth for the further use of students. 1 It 
is not meant to be implied that all, or nearly all, 
the books there named have been used exhaus- 
tively ; very many of them have merely been re- 
ferred to in order to keep the writer from going 
astray in matters on which their authors are au- 
thority and he is not. If he has, nevertheless, 
erred in these respects, he will feel under great 
obligations to those who will call his attention to 
the errors. The whole list is inserted in the hope 
that it may be of some preliminary service to 
those who shall further and more effectively pros- 
ecute the study of this commonwealth's great and 
honest work. 

The approaching year 1889 is the 250th anni- 
versary (or, to adopt the modern phrase, the quar- 
ter-millennial) of the Constitution of 1639, which 
seems to the writer the most far-reaching political 
work of modern times, and from which he con- 
ceives there are direct lines of communication run- 
ning down to all the great events which followed, 

J Seje Appendix, p. 397. 



xii PRE FA CE. 

— to commonwealth organization and colonial 
resistance, to national independence and federa- 
tion, to national union and organization, and even 
to national self-preservation and reconstruction. 
During the same year the nation will celebrate 
the one hundredth anniversary of the inaugura- 
tion of its Constitution, to whose essence and ex- 
pression Connecticut contributed so largely. This 
volume has been written in the hope that it may 
aid in widening the appreciation of Connecticut's 
first constitution, so that its birthday shall not 
pass without its fair share of remembrance. 

Princeton, X. J., Afag l, 1887. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAOB 

The Physical Geography of Connecticut 1 

CHAPTER II. 

J l U1SDICTION OF THE CONNECTICUT TERRITORY .... 7 

CHAPTER III. 
Tin First Settlements of Connecticut 14 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Indians of Connecticut 20 

CHAPTER V. 
The Pequot War 34 

CHAPTER VI. 
'I'm'. Connecticut Colony 50 

CHAPTER VII. 
The New Haven Colony 83 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Tin Saybrook Attempt and its Failure 108 

CHAPTER IX. 
Connecticut until the Union 120 

CHAPTER X. 
The Two Colonies until the Union 143 

CHAPTER XL 
The Charter and the Union 103 



SL1V CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Commonwealth. 1662-1763 192 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Ecclesiastical Affairs. 1636-1791 220 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Financial Affairs. 1640-1763 248 

CHAPTER XV. 
Commonwealth Development. — Wyoming and the 
Western Reserve 265 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Stamp Act and the Revolution 285 

CHAPTER XVII. 
The Adoption of the Federal Constitution .... 815 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Industrial Development 328 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Connecticut in the War for the Union 374 

CHAPTER XX. 
Recent Development 385 

APPENDIX. The Constitution of 1639 407 

Bibliography 415 

The Governors of Connecticut 419 

Index 421 



Note. — The seal on the title-page is a fae-simile of that wh .. h 
appears on the title-page of the first revision of the laws of C 
necticut, made in 1672 and published at Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts, by S. Green in 1673. A discussion of the seals of Connec- 
ticut will be found in the Collections of the Connecticut Historical 
Society, I. 251. 



Theirs is a pure republic, wild, yet strong, 
A '• fierce democracie," where all are true 

To what themselves have voted — right or wrong — 
And to their laws denominated " blue ; " 

If red, they might to Draco's code belong. 
A vestal State, which power could not subdue, 

Nor promise win, — like her own eagle's nest. 

Sacred, — the San Marino of the West. 

A justice of the peace, for the time being, 

They bow to, but may turn him out next year; 

They reverence their priest, but, disagreeing 
In price or creed, dismiss him without fear : 

They have a natural talent for foreseeing 

And knowing all things ; and, should Park appear 

From his long tour in Africa, to show 

The Niger's source, they 'd meet him with — We know. 

They love their land because it is their own, 
And scorn to give aught other reason why; 

Would shake hands with a king upon his throne, 
And think it kindness to his majesty; 

A stubborn race, fearing and flattering none. 
Such are they nurtured, such they live and die. 

Fitz-Greene Halleck. 



CONNECTICUT, 



CHAPTER I. 
THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF CONNECTICUT. 

The story of the commonwealth of Connecticut 
is one which is not strongly marked by the ro- 
mantic element. Here are no witchcraft delu- 
sions or persecuted Quakers, no doughty paladins 
or high-souled Indian maidens, no drowsy burghers 
or wooden-legged governors, — only laborious and 
single - minded men building a new state on a 
new soil, exemplifying in the process the ten- 
dency of their race, when placed in a wilderness, 
to revert to the ancestral type of civil government, 
ignoring the excrescences which centuries have 
bred upon it. The record of their work need not 
lose value from its simplicity. 

Connecticut is the furthest southwest of the 
little group of six American commonwealths to 
which the popular name of New England has 
been attached. It is of oblong shape, its northern 
and southern boundaries being about eighty-eight 
and one hundred miles long respectively, and its 
1 



2 CONNECTICUT. 

eastern and western boundaries forty-five and 
seventy-two miles. The northern and eastern 
boundaries are nearly straight lines east and west, 
and north and south, respectively. The western 
boundary is irregular at the southern extremity. 
The irregularities will be considered more fully 
hereafter, as they are the embodied mementos of 
certain steps by which the material form of the 
commonwealth was built up. The irregular south- 
ern coast is washed by the waters of Long Island 
Sound, beyond which lies the island which nature, 
confirmed by law, assigned to Connecticut, though 
the greed of the house of Stuart, superior to both 
law and nature, transferred it permanently to New 
York. The area of Connecticut is 4,990 square 
miles, about one third that of Denmark and not 
quite one half that of the Netherlands. 

The trend of the rivers will indicate the general 
mature of the, surface of the commonwealth, which 
is a succession of north and south hill ranges, 

separated by river valleys. The great central 
valley, about twenty miles in width, is drained by 
vhe river Connecticut as far south as Middletown, 

vhere the stream, forcing an outlet between two 
encroaching cliffs, pursues its way to the Sound at 

>aybrook, while the valley extends southwest to 
New Haven. This central valley, the seat of the 

arly colonization, has an ideal agricultural soil, a 

eep, rich loam, as far south as the point where 
leaves it: thence to New Haven it is 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF CONNECTICUT. 3 

more sandy and less profitable. The smaller and 
more broken valleys of the eastern part of the 
commonwealth, the former "Pequot Country," 
where the hill summits are not of great elevation, 
attracted the early settlers through their advan- 
tages for grazing : their water power has since 
proved a greater source of wealth from manufac- 
tures. The western part of Connecticut is even 
more broken than the eastern, and the sharp and 
ragged character of the hill-range summits make 
them a somewhat greater obstacle to east and west 
travel. Rough as is the general surface of the 
State, its highest point, Bear Mountain in Salis- 
bury, is 2,354 feet above sea-leveL 

Agriculture, in its various forms, was the first 
inducement to settlement ; but the settlers soon 
found that the soil contained metals. Of these, 
iron alone was profitable ; the manufacture of 
nails of all sizes was for a long time the principal 
home industry for the colonists in their leisure hours. 
Much of the iron used for the weapons of the Rev- 
olution came from Connecticut ; and its hematite 
ore still furnishes the best iron of its class in the 
country. Copper and lead exist in sufficient amount 
to lure a never-ending stream of adventurers into 
financial difficulties. The copper mines of Sims- 
bury (now in East Granby) were discovered 
about 1705, ruined a number of successive pro- 
prietors, and were finally made the state prison. 
They furnished the material for the " Granby 



4 CONNECTICUT. 

coppers," coined in 173,7, and for other coins, in. 
eluding the first United States coinage. There is 
even an ignis fatuus of gold and silver. The rocks 
of Connecticut have proved richer than a gold mine 
to those who have developed them. Lime-stone, 
marble, brown-stone, and flagging-stone are found 
in excellent quality and unlimited amount, and a 
large portion of the State leaves its borders annu- 
ally in this form of export. The supply of feldspar 
and other minerals has been developed as sharper 
demand for them has arisen. 

The beautiful southern shore of Connecticut, 
which holds countless pictures in every mile of its 
extent, has many harbors, and one, that of New 
London, has advantages beyond the others. There 
was not, however, in early years, sufficient agri- 
cultural wealth or other material support behind 
these harbors to build up any great foreign trade, 
beyond a moderate export of mules, live stock, 
and some food products to the West Indies ; and, 
in later years, the railroad has been a channel 
sufficiently capacious to provide for the outflow 
and inflow of the wealth in whose production it 
has been so essential a factor in Connecticut. The 
time will come when the harbors of Connecticut 
will be a necessary vent for foreign trade, but it 
has not yet come. 

To an intending English colonist in 1630, con- 
sidering this oblong as an unbroken wilderness, 
there would have been in it two points of great 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF CONNECTICUT. 5 

material advantage. One was the upper valley of 
the Connecticut, with its rich soil, its broad mead- 
ows, and its capacity for luxuriant vegetation ; 
and this garden spot was the breach to which the 
first assaulting party naturally directed its course. 
The other was the inviting haven at the mouth of 
the Thames River, apparently designed by nature 
for the site of a great commercial city ; and this 
was seized during the first decade. There were 
other minor advantages in other parts of the ter- 
ritory, such as the trade with the Indians for skins, 
or the pursuit of the fish with which Connecticut's 
waters and shore have always been stocked ; but 
these two spots, the upper Connecticut Valley and 
the site of the present city of New London, were 
those to which material interests most strongly 
turned the first immigration. Succeeding com- 
panies, finding these spots occupied, were filtered 
through them into the surrounding portions of the 
territory. 

Material interests, however, were far from being 
the only or controlling incentives to settlement. 
The New Haven company deliberately passed by 
the Thames River and sacrificed its preeminent 
commercial advantages, which must have been 
sufficiently evident to the shrewd merchant who 
was at the head of the enterprise ; and it is at least 
not an improbable notion that the sacrifice was 
grounded in the desire to give religion a place of 
recognized and permanent superiority to commerce 



6 CONNECTICUT. 

in the new settlement. The first break from Mas- 
sachusetts into the Connecticut Valley was gov- 
erned by religious, as it was actuated by material, 
motives. To the Connecticut settler, religion was 
an essential part of daily life and politics, and logic 
was an essential part of religion. Town and 
church were but two sides of the same thing. 
Differences of opinion there must be, in church as 
well as in town matters ; and, when the respective 
straight lines had diverged sufficiently, a rupture 
became inevitable. The minority, unwilling to 
resist the majority or to continue in illogical union 
with it, preferred to begin a new plantation, even 
in a less hospitable location. Thus, every reli- 
gious dispute usually gave rise to a new town, un- 
til the faintest lines of theological divergence were 
satisfied ; while the original disputants, finding 
that a distance of even a few miles was enough to 
soften down differences which once seemed intol- 
erable, were able to live together in congregational 
unity and harmony. 

These three — Hartford, New Haven, and New 
London, and mainly the two former — were thus 
the openings through which immigration flowed in, 
and, under natural pressure, was distributed over 
the whole territory, even those less inviting por- 
tions of it which would have waited longer for 
settlement but that the pressure from behind made 
distribution easier than return. 



CHAPTER II. 

JURISDICTION OF THE CONNECTICUT TERRI- 
TORY. 

The claim of England to the jurisdiction of the 
territory included in Connecticut rested on the 
discoveries of the Cabots in 1497, and more espe- 
cially in 1498. This claim, however, was allowed 
to lie dormant until the organization of the Lon- 
don and Plymouth companies in 1606, when the 
territory now in Connecticut was included in the 
grant to the Plymouth Company. No effort was 
made to reduce this territory to possession. The 
Dutch were allowed to plant a colony at New Am- 
sterdam, and the only white men who adventured 
on Long Island Sound were occasional Dutch 
skippers. The first of these was Adrian Blok, 
who in 1614 found the mouth of the Connecticut 
River, and explored the river as far north as the 
present site of Hartford. As the tides affect the 
Connecticut much less than they do the Hudson, 
the Dutch naturally gave the former the name of 
Varsche (or Fresh) River. Blok was merely a dis- 
coverer, and he sailed on to Narragansett Bay, 
leaving but a geographical impress on the terri- 
tory, whose importance to the Dutch lay only in 
its trade in peltries. 



8 CONNECTICUT. 

In 1620, and without the original permission of 
the Plymouth Company, English immigration 
fixed its first grip on the New England territory. 
The Plymouth Company itself did none of the 
work of colonization. It gave or sold patents for 
colonies, and, after a reorganization, gave up its 
imbecile existence in 1635, and returned its charter 
to the king, having first carefully divided up the 
soil among its own members. The allotments 
which are of interest in our subject were those of 
the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Carlisle, 
between the Hudson and Connecticut rivers ; and 
those of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Marquis 
of Hamilton, between the Connecticut River and 
Narragansett Bay. None of these grants was ever 
asserted or made troublesome to the colonists, with 
the exception of the Hamilton grant. 

The common story in our histories is that the 
Council of Plymouth in 1630 granted the territory 
now in Connecticut to the Earl of Warwick, and 
that he, in 1631, transferred it to Viscount Say 
and Sele, Lord Brooke, and others, who were dis- 
posed to establish another Puritan colony in New 
England. They were detained in England by the 
approach of civil war ; but their agents, Winthrop 
at Boston and Fenwick at the mouth of the Con- 
necticut River, maintained their claims, and gave 
the settlers in the upper Connecticut Valley either 
a private or a tacit permission to enter their do- 
main. In 1662, with the consent of the surviving 



JURISDICTION OF CONNECTICUT TERRITORY. 9 

patentees, the jurisdiction was transferred to the 
Connecticut colony, which could thus claim un- 
broken continuity of title from the beginning of 
English colonization in America. 

The insistence of Connecticut authorities on 
this chain of evidence was undoubtedly due in 
great measure to the desire to make out a title 
paramount to anything which the rival New 
Haven colony could offer, and to put the New 
Haven colonists into the legal position of original 
trespassers, whose defect of title could never be 
cured after the grant of the charter in 1662. Even 
after this result had been attained, and New Haven 
had submitted to incorporation with Connecticut, 
another motive to continue the old claim was 
found in the claims of the Hamilton family and 
the colony's desire to antedate them with its own. 
The story above given made out an admirably 
harmonious title from beginning to end ; and it 
was natural that it should become the official Con- 
necticut account. 

The foundation of the whole account, the grant 
to Warwick, is altogether mythical ; no one has 
ever seen it, or has heard of any one who claims to 
have seen it. It is not mentioned even in the 
grant from Warwick to the Say and Sele patentees 
in 1631. In that document, " Robert, Earl of 
Warwick, sendeth greeting in our Lord God ever- 
lasting to all people unto whom this present writ- 
ing shall come." He "gives, grants, bargains, 



10 CONNECTICUT. 

sells, enfeoffs, aliens, and confirms" to the Viscount 
Say and Sele, Lord Brooke, John Pym, John 
Hampden, and others, the soil from the Narragan- 
sett River to the Pacific Ocean, and all jurisdic- 
tion " which the said Robert, Earl of Warwick, 
now hath or had or might use, exercise, or enjoy." 
What jurisdiction he had, or whence he had ac- 
quired it, he is careful not to say ; the deed is a 
mere quitclaim, which warrants nothing, and does 
not even assert title to the soil transferred. In 
the Hamilton grant, on the contrary, the claim of 
title is carefully and fully stated. Why the War- 
wick transaction took this peculiar shape, why 
Warwick transferred, without showing title, a ter- 
ritory which the original owners granted anew to 
other patentees in 1635, are questions which are 
beyond conjecture. It is evident, however, that 
the New Haven colonists were until 1662 on an 
absolute equality with their brethren of Connecti- 
cut ; that all were legally trespassers ; and that 
the charter of 1662 could have no retroactive 
effect in validating the Say and Sele title, for that 
was a nullity. The charter of 1662 is the only 
legal title of Connecticut ; the only legal titles 
prior to it, the grants of 1635, were barred by pre- 
scription before the Hamilton heirs undertook to 
prosecute their claim. In yielding to the final 
junction, New Haven yielded to royal power, not 
to a better title enforced by law. 

The jurisdiction of Connecticut had a far better 



JURISDICTION OF CONNECTICUT TERRITORY. 11 

title than could have been conferred by any charter ; 
and the titles of both Connecticut and New Haven 
stood on exactly the same footing. In 1630 the 
territory was a wilderness. The king of England 
had laid claim to it by virtue of the undisputed fact 
that Sebastian Cabot might possibly have caught 
a distant glimpse of it as he passed by the coast 
more than a century before. The king granted it 
to a company which had not yet either settled or 
granted it. Just before the outbreak of the Civil 
War in England, the territory was reduced to 
possession by immigrants, who quieted the claims 
of the Indians by contract, and enforced the con- 
tract by public force. The Civil War and its con- 
sequences upon royal authority lasted long enough 
to cover the time which human law takes as a title 
by prescription. When Charles II. returned, who 
could show a better title to the soil of Connecticut 
than the colonists themselves ? 

This could cover, at the best, only the title to 
the soil; the civil jurisdiction is of more impor- 
tance. The first settlements, at Hartford, Windsor 
and Wethersfield, were an irruption of subjects of 
the king of England into an unorganized and un- 
occupied territory, very much like the first settle- 
ments in the territory of Iowa, more than two 
centuries later. But there was one very great 
difference between the two cases : the Iowa settle- 
ment was an irruption of individuals ; the Con- 
necticut settlement was an irruption of organized 



12 CONNECTICUT. 

towns. In Massachusetts, the original towns, or 
"plantations," were hardly to be taken as organ- 
ized governments ; and the advent of the charter 
government reduced them, and subsequent towns 
as well, to a condition of subordination. In Con- 
necticut, three fully organized Massachusetts 
towns passed out of the jurisdiction of any com- 
monwealth, and proceeded to build up a common- 
wealth of their own ; while in New Haven the 
original town and its successive allies entered 
their new locations without ever having owned 
connection with any commonwealth since leaving 
England. The commonwealth jurisdiction of Con- 
necticut is peculiar in that it was the product, in- 
stead of the source, of its town system. 

As a commonwealth, Connecticut has never lost 
the characteristics due to its origin. Although 
the commonwealth, by the royal charter of 1662, 
obtained a legal basis independent of the towns 
and superior to them in law, the towns have re- 
tained a marked individuality, and the common- 
wealth a narrowness of function, which indicate 
the original relations of both. When Connecticut 
undertook to push her claims in Wyoming and in 
Ohio, the instrument to which she instinctively 
turned was the town system, rather than the com- 
monwealth. And she still is, in many respects, a 
congeries of towns, though the commonwealth 
spirit has grown stronger with the years. Curious 
and worthy of study as is the New England town 



JURISDICTION OF CONNECTICUT TERRITORY. 13 

system, there are few phases of it more worthy of 
study than the manner in which, in Connecticut, 
it succeeded in creating a commonwealth body for 
itself ; in pushing back the asserted boundaries of 
its neighbors ; and at last, when the royal power 
could no longer be evaded, in using the royal 
power to round out and complete its own form, as 
it could not have done itself without a fratricidal 
struggle with a sister colony. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS OF CONNECTICUT. 

During the ten years after 1620, the twin col- 
onies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay had 
been fairly shaken down into their places, and had 
even begun to look around them for opportunities 
of extension. It was not possible that the fertile 
and inviting territory to the southwest should long 
escape their notice. In 1629, De Rasieres, an en- 
voy from New Amsterdam, was at Plymouth. He 
found the Plymouth people building a shallop for 
the purpose of obtaining a share in the wampum 
trade of Narragansett Bay ; and he very shrewdly 
sold them at a bargain enough wampum to supply 
their needs, for fear they should discover at Nar- 
ragansett the more profitable peltry trade beyond. 
This artifice only put off the evil day. Within 
the next three years, several Plymouth men, in- 
cluding Winslow, visited the Connecticut River, 
" not without profit." In April, 1631, a Connecti- 
cut Indian visited Governor Winthrop at Boston, 
asking for settlers, and offering to find them corn 
and furnish eighty beaver skins a year. Win- 
throp declined even to send an exploring party. In 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS OF CONNECTICUT. 15 

the midsummer of 1633, Winslow went to Boston 
to propose a joint occupation of the new territory 
by Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay ; but the 
latter still refused, doubting the profit and the 
safety of the venture. 

Three months later, Plymouth undertook the 
work alone. A small vessel, under command of 
William Holmes, was sent around by sea to the 
mouth of the Connecticut River, with the frame 
of a trading house and workmen to put it up. 
When Holmes had sailed up the river as far as 
the place where Hartford was afterward built, he 
found the Dutch already in possession. For ten 
years they had been talking of erecting a fort on 
the Varsche River ; but the ominous and repeated 
appearance of New Englanders in the territory had 
roused them to action at last. John Van Corlear, 
with a few men, had been commissioned by Gover- 
nor Van Twiller, and had put up a rude earth- 
work, with two guns, within the present jurisdic- 
tion of Hartford. His summons to Holmes to 
stop under penalty of being fired into met with no 
more respect than was shown by the commandant 
of Rensselaerswyck to his challengers, according 
to the veracious Knickerbocker. Holmes declared 
that he had been sent up the river, and was going 
up the river, and furthermore he went up the 
river. His little vessel passed on to the present 
site of Windsor. Here the crew disembarked, put 
up and garrisoned their trading house, and then 



16 CONNECTICUT. 

returned home. Plymouth had at least planted 
the flag far within the coveted and disputed terri- 
tory. 

In December of the following year, a Dutch 
force of seventy men from New Amsterdam ap- 
peared before the trading house to drive out the 
intruders. He must be strong who drives a Yan- 
kee away from a profitable trade ; and the attitude 
of the little garrison was so determined that the 
Dutchmen, after a few hostile demonstrations, de- 
cided that the nut was too hard to crack, and 
withdrew. For about twenty years thereafter, 
the Dutch held post at Hartford, isolated from 
Dutch support by a continually deepening mass of 
New Englanders, who refrained from hostilities, 
and waited until the apple was ripe enough to 
drop. 

With respect to the claims of the Indians, the 
attitudes of the two parties to the struggle were di- 
rectly opposite. The Dutch came on the strength 
of purchase from the Pequots, the conquerors and 
lords paramount of the local Indians. Holmes 
brought to the Connecticut River in his vessel the 
local sachems, who had been driven away by the 
Pequots, and made his purchases from them. The 
English policy will account for the unfriendly dis- 
position of the Pequots, and, when followed up by 
the tremendous overthrow of the Pequots, for Con- 
necticut's permanent exemption from Indian dif- 
ficulties. The Connecticut settlers followed a 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS OF CONNECTICUT. 17 

straight road, buying lands fairly from the Indians 
found in possession, ignoring those who claimed a 
supremacy based on violence, and, in case of re- 
sistance by the latter, asserting and maintaining 
for Connecticut an exactly similar title, — the 
right of the stronger. Those who claimed right 
received it ; those who preferred force were ac- 
commodated. 

One route to the new territory, by Long Is- 
land Sound and the Connecticut River, had thus 
been appropriated. The other, the overland route 
through Massachusetts, was explored during the 
same year, 1633, by one John Oldham, who was 
murdered by the Pequots two years afterward. 
He found his way westward to the Connecticut 
River, and brought back most appetizing accounts 
of the upper Connecticut Valley ; and his reports 
seem to have suggested a way out of a serious dif- 
ficulty which had come to a head in Massachu- 
setts Bay. 

The colony of Massachusetts Bay was at this 
time limited to a district covering not more than 
twenty or thirty miles from the sea, and its great- 
est poverty, as Cotton stated, was a poverty of 
men. And yet the colony was to lose pare of its 
scanty store of men. Three of the eight Massa- 
chusetts towns, Dorchester, Watertown, and New- 
town (now Cambridge), had been at odds with 
the other five towns on several occasions ; and the 
assigned reasons are apparently so frivolous as to 



18 CONNECTICUT. 

lead to'the suspicion that some fundamental differ- 
ence was at the bottom of them. The three towns 
named had been part of the great Puritan influx 
of 1630. Their inhabitants were " new-comers," 
and this slight division may have been increased 
by the arrival and settlement, in 1633, of a num- 
ber of strong men at these three towns, notably 
Hooker, Stone, and Haynes at Newtown. Dor- 
chester, Watertown, and Newtown showed many 
symptoms of an increase of local feeling : the two 
former led the way, in October, 1633, in establish- 
ing town governments under " selectmen ; " and 
all three neglected or evaded, more or less, the fun- 
damental feature of Massachusetts policy, — the 
limitation of office-holding and the elective fran- 
chise to church-members. The three towns fell 
into the position of the commonwealth's opposi- 
tion, a position not particularly desirable at the 
time and under all the circumstances. 

The ecclesiastical leaders of Dorchester were 
Warham and Maverick ; of Newtown, Hooker and 
Stone ; of Watertown, Phillips. Haynes of New- 
town, Ludlow of Dorchester, and Pynchon of 
Roxbury, were the principal lay leaders of the 
half-formed opposition. Some have thought that 
Haynes was jealous of Governor Winthrop, Hooker 
of Cotton, and Ludlow of everybody. But the 
opposition, if it can be fairly called an opposition, 
was not so definite as to be traceable to any such 
personal source. The strength which marked the 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS OF CONNECTICUT. 19 

divergence was due neither to ambition nor to 
jealousy, but to the strength of mind and charac- 
ter which marked the leaders of the minority. 

Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone were of 
Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Hooker began 
to preach at Chelmsford in 1626, and was silenced 
for non -conformity in 1629. He then taught 
school, his assistant being John Eliot, afterward 
the apostle to the Indians ; but the chase after 
him became warmer, and in 1630 he retired to 
Holland and resumed his preaching. In 1632, he 
and Stone came to New England as pastor and 
teacher of the church at Newtown ; and the two 
took part in the migration to Hartford. Here 
Hooker became the undisputed ecclesiastical leader 
of Connecticut until his death in 1647. John 
Warham and John Maverick, both of Exeter in 
England, came to New England in 1630, as pastor 
and teacher of Dorchester. Maverick died while 
preparing to follow his church, but Warham set- 
tled with his parishioners at Windsor, and died 
there in 1670. George Phillips, also a Cambridge 
man, came to New England in 1630, as pastor of 
the church at Watertown. He took no part in 
the migration, but lived and died at Watertown. 
Fate seems to have determined that Wendell Phil- 
lips should belong to Massachusetts. 

Roger Ludlow was Endicott's brother-in-law. 
He came to New England in 1630, and settled at 
Dorchester. He was deputy governor in 1634, 



20 CONNECTICUT. 

and seems to have been " slated," to use the 
modern term, for the governorship in the follow- 
ing year. But this private agreement among the 
deputies was broken, for some unknown reason, 
by the voters, who chose Haynes, perhaps as a 
less objectionable representative of the opposition. 
Ludlow complained so openly and angrily of the 
failure to carry out the agreement that he was 
dropped from the magistracy at the next election. 
He went at once to Connecticut, and was deputy 
governor there in alternate years until 1654. 
Incensed at the interference of New Haven to 
prevent his county, Fairfield, from waging an in- 
dependent warfare against the Dutch, he went to 
Virginia in 1654, taking the records of the county 
with him. It is not known when or where he 
died. Pynchon, the third lay leader of the oppo- 
sition, took part in the migration, but remained 
within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, founding 
the town of Springfield. 

At the May session of the Massachusetts Gen- 
eral Court in 1634, an application for "liberty to 
remove " was received from Newtown. It was 
granted. At the September session, the request 
was changed into one for removal to Connecticut. 
This was a very different matter, and, after long 
debate, was defeated by the vote of the Assistants, 
though the Deputies passed it. Various reasons 
were assigned for the request to remove to Con- 
necticut, — lack of room in their present locations, 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS OF CONNECTICUT. 21 

the desire to save Connecticut from the Dutch, 
and " the strong bent of their spirits to remove 
thither;" but the last looks like the strongest 
reason. In like manner, while the arguments to 
the contrary were those which would naturally 
suggest themselves, the weakening of Massachu- 
setts, and the peril of the emigrants, the conclud- 
ing argument, that "the removing of a candle- 
stick " would be " a great judgment," seems to 
show the feeling of all parties that the secession 
was the result of discord between two parties. 

Haynes was made governor at the next General 
Court. Successful inducements were offered to 
some of the Newtown people to remove to Boston, 
and some few concessions were made. But the 
migration which had been denied to the corporate 
towns had probably been begun by individuals. 
There is a tradition that some of the Watertown 
people passed this winter of 1634-5 at the place 
where Wethersfield now stands. In May, 1635, 
the Massachusetts General Court voted that lib- 
erty be granted to the people of Watertown and 
Roxbury to remove themselves to any place within 
the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. In March, 
1636, the secession having already been accom- 
plished, the General Court issued a " Commission 
to Several Persons to govern the people at Con- 
necticut." Its preamble reads : " Whereas, upon 
some reasons and grounds, there are to remove 
from this our Commonwealth and body of the 



22 CONNECTICUT. 

Massachusetts in America divers of our loving 
friends and neighbors, freemen and members of 
Newtown, Dorchester, Watertown, and other 
places, who are resolved to transport themselves 
and their estates unto the river of Connecticut, 
there to reside and inhabit ; and to that end divers 
are there already, and divers others shortly to go." 
This tacit permission was the only authorization 
given by Massachusetts ; but it should be noted 
that the unwilling permission was made more 
gracious by a kindly loan of cannon and ammuni- 
tion for the protection of the new settlements. 

If it be true that some of the Watertown peo- 
ple had wintered at Wethersfield in 1634-5, this 
was the first civil settlement in Connecticut ; and 
it is certain that, all through the following spring, 
summer, and autumn, detached parties of Water- 
town people were settling at Wethersfield. Dur- 
ing the summer of 1635, a Dorchester party ap- 
peared near the Plymouth factory, and laid the 
foundations of the town of Windsor. In October 
of the same year, a party of sixty persons, includ- 
ing women and children, largely from Newtown, 
made the overland march and settled where Hart- 
ford now stands. Their journey was begun so 
late that the winter overtook them before they 
reached the river, and, as they had brought their 
cattle with them, they found great difficulty in 
getting everything across the river by means of 
rafts. 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS OF CONNECTICUT. 23 

It may have been that the echoes of all these 
preparations had reached England, and stirred the 
tardy patentees to action. Daring the autumn of 
1635, John Winthrop, Jr., agent of the Say and 
Sele associates, reached Boston, with authority to 
build a large fort at the mouth of the Connecticut 
River. He was to be " Governor of the River 
Connecticut " for one year, and he at once issued 
a proclamation to the Massachusetts emigrants, 
asking " under what right and preference they 
had lately taken up their plantation." It is said 
that they agreed to give up any lands demanded 
by him, or to return on having their expenses re- 
paid. A more dangerous influence, however, soon 
claimed Winthrop's attention. Before the winter 
set in, he had sent a party to seize the designated 
spot for a fort at the mouth of the Connecticut 
River. His promptness was needed. Just as his 
men had thrown up a work sufficient for defense 
and had mounted a few guns, a Dutch ship from 
New Amsterdam appeared, bringing a force in- 
tended to appropriate the same place. Again the 
Dutch found themselves a trifle late ; and their 
post at Hartford was thus finally cut off from 
effective support. 

This was a horrible winter to the advanced 
guard of English settlers on the upper Connecti- 
cut. The navigation of the river was completely 
blocked by ice before the middle of November ; 
and the vessels which were to have brought their 



24 CONNECTICUT 

winter supplies by way of Long Island Sound and 
the river were forced to return to Boston, leaving 
the wretched settlers unprovided for. For a little 
while, some scanty supplies of corn were obtained 
from the neighboring Indians, but this resource 
soon failed. About seventy persons straggled 
down the river to the fort at its mouth. There 
they found and dug out of the ice a sixty-ton ves- 
sel, and made their way back to Boston. Others 
turned back on the way they had come, and strug- 
gled through the snow and ice to "the Bay." 
But a few held their grip on the new territory. 
Subsisting first on a little corn bought from more 
distant Indians, then by hunting, and finally on 
ground-nuts and acorns dug from under the snow, 
they fought through the winter and held their 
ground. But it was a narrow escape. Spring 
found them almost exhausted, their unsheltered 
cattle dead, and just time enough to bring neces- 
sary supplies from home. The Dorchester people 
alone lost cattle to the value of two thousand 
pounds. 

The Newtown congregation, in October, 1635, 
found customers for their old homes in a new 
party from England ; and in the following June 
Hooker and Stone led their people overland to 
Connecticut. They numbered one hundred, with 
one hundred and sixty head of cattle. Women 
and children were of the party. Mrs. Hooker, 
who was ill, was carried on a litter ; and the jour- 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS OF CONNECTICUT. 25 

ney, of " about one hundred miles," occupied two 
weeks. Its termination was well calculated to 
dissipate the evil auguries of the previous winter. 
The Connecticut Valley in early June ! Its green 
meadows, flanked by wooded hills, lay before 
them. Its oaks, whose patriarch was to shelter 
their charter, its great elms and tulip-trees, were 
broken by the silver ribbon of the river ; here 
and there were the wigwams of the Indians, or 
the cabins of the survivors of the winter ; and, 
over and through all, the light of a day in June 
welcomed the new-comers. The thought of aban- 
doning Connecticut disappeared forever. 

During the summer of 1636, the body of the 
church at Dorchester settled at Windsor, having 
Warham as its pastor. Maverick had died before 
the removal was completed. The WatertOwn 
people also completed their removal, having Henry 
Smith as pastor, Phillips remaining behind. Pyn- 
chon, with eight companions, settled at Springfield, 
just north of the boundary between Massachusetts 
and Connecticut. When the spring of 1637 had 
fairly opened, there were about eight hundred 
persons within the present limits of Connecticut, 
two hundred and fifty of whom were adult males 
and fighting men. Perhaps the " strong bent of 
spirit " to remove to a commonwealth where indi- 
viduality was not to be sacrificed to " steady hab- 
its " was not entirely confined to Newtown, Wa- 
tertown, and Dorchester. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE INDIANS OF CONNECTICUT. 

The aborigines of Connecticut did not differ 
from other New England Indians so much as to 
demand any extended notice. They were not nu- 
merous ; the lowest and most probable estimate 
of their numbers is six or seven thousand, and the 
highest twenty thousand. The northeastern sec- 
tion of the territory was inhabited by the Nip- 
munks. The upper Connecticut separated the 
Tunxis Indians on its western banks from the 
Podunks on the eastern. To the south of both 
were the Wangunks. New Haven is now in the 
centre of the former territory of the Quinnipiacks. 
To the west of the Quinnipiacks were the Paugus- 
setts, and to the west of them a great number of 
scattered tribes, known generally by the names of 
their respective sachems or of the English towns 
in which they dwelt. 

All these tribes were alike unclean in their 
habits, shiftless in their mode of life, and much 
addicted to po wo wing, devil-worship, and darker 
immoralities, if we may trust the possibly hasty 
and prejudiced accounts of the early Puritan ob- 



THE INDIANS OF CONNECTICUT. 27 

servers. The Indian rule, that all work is to be 
done by the women, was enforced in its full rigor ; 
but the correlative virtue of prowess in war was 
not so prominent in the men, who were rather 
prone to shout at a distance than to expose their 
lives to the hazards of battle. They had, how- 
ever, developed military science so far as to have 
become acquainted with the rudiments of fortifi- 
cation. It is not easy to say how far their con- 
structions deserved the name of forts, but they 
were numerous, and were an advance on the ordi- 
nary Indian methods of fighting. The Connec- 
ticut Indians were indebted for the advance, not 
to natural genius, but to their chronic terror of 
their lords or enemies, the Mohawks. 

The Five Nations of Iroquois in central New 
York had become the leading Indian power of 
eastern North America. Its original five mem- 
bers, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayu- 
gas, and Senecas, were increased by the addition 
of the Tuscaroras from North Carolina in 1712, 
and the confederacy was thereafter known as the 
Six Nations ; but, at all periods of its history, the 
Mohawks were so emphatically the leading mem- 
ber that their name was regularly put by synec- 
doche for the whole. The Connecticut Indians, 
at any rate, never stopped to discriminate mi- 
nutely between the various branches of the Six 
Nations, but, on the appearance of any of them, 
promptly fled with the panic-stricken cry, " The 



28 CONNECTICUT. 

Mohawks are coming ! " There seems to have 
been hardly the thought of resistance, when, every 
year, two elders of the Mohawks appeared in 
Connecticut, passing from village to village, col- 
lecting tribute, and announcing the edicts of the 
great council at Onondaga. To this exercise of 
supremacy they seem to have made but one excep- 
tion, the kindred tribe of the Pequots. 

The Indians of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and 
probably Massachusetts, were originally of one 
blood, perhaps divided into a few strong tribes. A 
few years before the arrival of the English, ac- 
cording to tradition, a sept of the Mohegan blood 
from New York, .crossing the Hudson and moving 
eastward to the Connecticut River, passed south- 
ward and conquered a permanent home for them- 
selves on the shore of Long Island Sound, in the 
southeastern part of the present State. This ir- 
ruption split the Indian population into two parts. 
To the east of the Pequots were the Narragansetts, 
the powerful tribe of Miantonomoh and Canon diet, 
dwelling in Rhode Island, but claiming still some 
portion of the soil of Connecticut. They were 
sufficiently intact to make head against the Pe- 
quots, and waged continual war with them ; but, 
lacking the ferocity and fervor for war which was 
a Pequot characteristic, they had difficulty in 
maintaining their position. To the west of the 
Pequots, the pressure of the strangers on one side 
and the Mohawks on the other ground up the 



THE INDIANS OF CONNECTICUT. 29 

Indians into that mass of petty tribes which has 
been referred to, none of which dared to offer re- 
sistance after the power of the Pequots had been 
once established, all being interested merely to es- 
cape the notice of their oppressors as far as pos- 
sible. Thus the Pequots, with but seven hundred 
fighting men, were able to overawe all the western 
tribes, while maintaining equal warfare with the 
Narragansetts, whose warriors are variously esti- 
mated at from one to five thousand. There are 
no annals of Indian diplomacy from which we may 
learn how the Six Nations and the Pequots avoided 
collision in the matter of supremacy over their 
tributaries; but it is not probable that either 
power was intent on establishing a right of ex- 
clusive extortion. Both were satisfied by the pay- 
ment of their respective tribute, and the Pequot 
irruption merely doubled the burden of the abori- 
ginal inhabitants. 

At the time of the English entrance to Connec- 
ticut, the grand sachem of the Pequots was Tato- 
bam, or Sassacus. One of his sagamores was 
Uncas, whose grandmother was the sister of the 
grandfather of Sassacus. Uncas had connected 
himself still more closely with the sachem's house 
by taking the daughter of Sassacus in marriage. 
He was Sagamore of Mohegan, the most impor- 
tant Pequot district. His courage, strength, and 
cunning were remarkable even among the Pe- 
quots ; and the relations between him and Sas- 



30 CONNECTICUT. 

sacus soon became strained and finally broke. Un- 
able to resist the grand sachem, Uncas fled to 
the Narragansetts, was allowed to return, rebelled 
again, and was again defeated and fled. It was 
inevitable that the coming of the English should 
act as a wedge on this rift in the conquering tribe, 
and should make its downfall the surer. 

The Dutch had at first recognized the Pequots 
as lords paramount of the territory, and had made 
their purchases of land from them. But the Pe- 
quots, unable to restrain the savagery of their 
natures, had lain in wait for and killed some of 
their enemies at the Dutch trading-house, and had 
thus interfered very seriously with the course of 
trade. In retaliation, the Dutch had killed the 
father of Sassacus. Anxious to get rid of his 
troublesome neighbors, Sassacus had acquiesced 
in the invitation of Winthrop to furnish settlers 
for the Connecticut Valley. But when Holmes at 
last came, he brought back some of the old sa- 
chems, who had been expelled by the Pequots, and 
made his purchases of land from them. Further- 
more, a certain lewd and drunken ship-captain 
named Stone, from Virginia, having brought his 
vessel into the Connecticut River during the sum- 
mer of 1633, was taken for a Dutchman by the 
Pequots, who murdered him while he lay in a 
drunken sleep in his cabin. During the following 
year, Sassacus sent messengers who made a treaty 
with the government of Massachusetts Bay, by the 



THE INDIANS OF CONNECTICUT. 31 

terms of which many of the difficulties between 
his tribe and the English were put out of sight. 
The Pequots were to allow the English to colonize 
and trade within their borders ; were to give up 
the murderers of Stone ; and were to pay a tribute 
of wampum, a part of which was to be transferred 
by the English to the Narragansetts, so as to bring 
about a peace between these two ancient enemies 
without subjecting the haughty Pequot chief to 
the degradation of a personal appeal for cessation 
of hostilities. The terms were largely nominal. 
The English made no demand for those who had 
murdered Stone, and Sassacus paid none of the 
stipulated tribute and was asked for none. 

The murder of John Oldham, in 1636, first 
brought the English into collision with the Pe- 
quots. Oldham, with a crew of two boys and two 
Narragansett Indians, had been trading with a 
pinnace on the shore of the Pequot country, and 
had passed on to Block Island. Here he was 
killed by the Island Indians. The murder had 
hardly taken place when John Gallop, who was 
sailing from the Connecticut River to the east end 
of Long Island, found Oldham's vessel in posses- 
sion of Indians. He first fired duck-shot into the 
naked Indian crew until he had driven them under 
hatches, and then rammed Oldham's vessel until 
all but four of the Indians had jumped overboard 
and were drowned. Two surrendered, and he 
made sure of one of them by throwing him over- 



32 CONNECTICUT. 

board. As the sea was rising he took Oldham's 
body into his vessel, and allowed the derelict to 
drift ashore with two of the Indians still in her 
hold. 

It is difficult to see how the Pequots were con- 
cerned in all this. But Governor Vane and his 
council, of Massachusetts Bay, in sending Endi- 
cott with an expedition to punish the Block Island- 
ers, assumed that the Pequots had harbored some 
of the murderers, and must be included in the 
punishment. No proof was offered to the in- 
dictment against the Pequots, who seem to have 
held the same place in the English mind that 
Habakkuk held in the Frenchman's, and to be 
"capable of anything." But Endicott gathered 
no laurels in his Pequot expedition. His fero- 
cious antagonists did not wish to fight, and could 
hardly be persuaded to fight. A few of them, and 
none of the English, were killed and wounded ; 
and the expedition, having satiated its wrath by 
burning the Indian wigwams and crops, returned 
to Boston. 

Enough had been done to range the Pequots 
against the English. As a choice of evils, Sassa- 
cus proposed to the Narragansetts a treaty of alli- 
ance against the foreigners, but this was thwarted 
by the influence of Roger Williams, who induced 
the Narragansetts to send ambassadors to Boston 
and conclude a treaty with the English. The Pe- 
quots were thus left to maintain alone their ancient 



THE INDIANS OF CONNECTICUT. 33 

title, by courage, to their territory. They did not 
hesitate. The fort at Saybrook, whose commander, 
Lieutenant Gardiner, had strongly disapproved 
Endicott's expedition, was first attacked. A forag- 
ing party was cut off, and several men were cap- 
tured and put to the torture. Other parties were 
similarly caught in ambuscades, and the fort was 
beleaguered through the whole winter. In the 
spring of 1637, the war was opened in the upper 
Connecticut Valley. The people of Wethersfield 
had agreed, in buying lands from Sequin, a friendly 
Indian, to allow him to remain within the town 
limits. The agreement was violated, and he was 
expelled. In revenge, he brought the Pequots 
down upon the little settlement. They almost 
took it by surprise, killed a number of the people, 
and inflicted considerable damage before they were 
driven off. Four days afterward, the successful 
Pequots sailed past the fort at Saybrook, waving 
the clothes of their victims and exhibiting two cap- 
tive girls. The Pequot war had fairly begun, and, 
in the nature of things, it could be ended only by 
the extermination of one party or the other. For 
this severe strain upon an infant colony, the Con- 
necticut colonists were indebted to the stupidity or 
willfulness of Governor Vane and his council. They 
must have appreciated Cromwell's subsequent es- 
timate of the governor. 
3 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PEQUOT WAR. 

The Connecticut General Court met at Hart- 
ford May 1, 1637. the ninth meeting of that body 
which is on the records. It is uot likely that it 
represented, as yet, more than eight hundred souls, 
though the proportion of fighting men in so young 
a colony must have been abnormally large. Its 
action was thorough-going. It resolved that there 
should be kk an offensiuc warr against the Pequoitt," 
and a draft of ninety men was ordered from the 
three towns. — forty-two from Hartford, thirty 
from Windsor, and eighteen from Wethersfield, — 
the whole to be under command of Captain John 
Mason, of Windsor. The minute distribution of 
the assessment of the requisition for stores upon 
the three towns, and the proviso that one half of 
the corn is to be baked into biscuit k * if by any 
meanes they eann," are evidences of the poverty of 
the colony, and the resolution with which its rulers 
drove their demands upon its patriotism up to the 
highest possible point. It is certain that the 
people were nearly starving when they were thus 
called on for a full third of their able-bodied men. 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 35 

Nine days after the call, May 10, the ninety men 
were ready, and, with seventy Mohegans under 
Uncas, who was thereafter the ally of the colonists, 
embarked on the river in three small vessels. Un- 
cas and his men soon found the voyage uncomfort- 
able, and begged to be allowed to make the trip 
to Say brook by land. When Mason reached Say- 
brook, after five days of tedious sailing, he found 
Uncas there, exultant in the success of a battle 
with the Pequots, in which he had killed seven of 
his enemies and captured another, who had been 
living among the colonists as a spy. The spy 
could appeal to no law, civilized or savage, for 
safety ; but it is a repulsive business to read the 
punishment which was allowed to be inflicted. He 
was handed over to the mercy of Uncas and his 
Mohegans, who tortured and roasted him, and 
finally ate him. 

Lying wind-bound in front of the fort at Say- 
brook, Mason knew well that his motions were 
under the sharp eyes of Pequot scouts, and that 
his entry into the Thames River would find his 
enemies thoroughly prepared to meet him. Forti- 
fied by a council of war, and by an all-night prayer 
of the chaplain, Mr. Stone, he decided to disobey 
instructions, pass en to Narragansett Bay, and at- 
tack the Pequots from the eastward. The change 
of programme was no doubt watched carefully by 
the runners of Sassacus ; and when the three 
vessels had passed the only available landing place 



36 CONNECTICUT. 

in the Pequot country, the Thames or Pequot River, 
the doomed tribe abandoned itself to a sense of 
triumphant security : the white men had not 
dared attack them after all, but had chosen the 
less formidable Indians of Block Island or the Bay 
as the objects of their revenge. The danger had 
passed them by. 

On Saturday, May 30, the little squadron came 
to anchor in Narragansett Bay, too late in the 
afternoon to effect anything that day. It is a 
witness of their conscientious exposition of the 
Puritan theory that the urgent need for prompt 
action in order to gain the advantage of a sur- 
prise could not induce them to devote Sunday to 
that purpose ; and then an unfavorable wind kept 
them from landing until Tuesday night. March- 
ing at once to the village of Miantonomoh, the 
Narragansett chief, Mason demanded his assistance 
against their common enemy. The chief consid- 
ered their enterprise a most laudable one, but 
thought the English too few to deal with such 
" great captains " as the Pequots. All that could 
be obtained was permission to pass through the 
Narragansett country, but a number of individual 
volunteers from the surrounding Indians joined 
the troops on their march. A few days' waiting 
would have increased their force by a Massachu- 
setts reinforcement under Captain Patrick, which 
had already reached Providence ; but Mason bal- 
anced the advantage of surprise against this in- 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 37 

crease of force and pushed on. Thirteen men 
were sent back with the vessels to meet the main 
body at the Pequot River ; and the army now con- 
sisted of seventy-seven Englishmen, Uncas's Mohe- 
gans, and about two hundred exceedingly doubtful 
Narragansett auxiliaries, who were present rather 
as spectators and critics than as fighting men. 

One day's march carried the expedition nearly 
across the present State of Rhode Island, and on 
the next morning the eagerness of the Narragan- 
sett auxiliaries to act as a rear guard proved 
that the trail was becoming uncomfortably warm. 
Toward evening, when just north of the present 
town of Stonington, Mason called a halt, and was 
told by the Narragansetts that they were now 
close to one of the two great Pequot forts ; the 
other, the chief residence of Sassacus, being sev- 
eral hours' journey further on. Camp was formed, 
and the men slept on their arms, their outposts 
having been pushed near enough to the fort to hear 
the revelry of the Indian garrison, which lasted 
until midnight. Before daybreak, June 5, the 
men were up and on the march. Two miles of an 
Indian trail brought them to the foot of a swelling 
hill, still known as Pequot Hill, near Groton. 
Here Uncas was called on for explanations, as there 
were no signs of the Pequots. He told Mason 
that the fort was at the top of the hill before him, 
and that the Narragansetts at the rear had now 
fallen into a condition of abject fright. " Tell 



38 CONNECTICUT. 

them not to fly," said Mason, " but stand behind, 
at what distance they please, and see now whether 
Englishmen will fight." 

Underhill with part of the men on the southern 
slope, and Mason with the rest on the opposite 
side, stole cautiously up the hill. There were no 
sentinels, and the garrison was still sound asleep. 
As the assailants came within a rod of the pali- 
sade, there was a bark from an Indian cur within 
it, and some Pequot warrior, perhaps starting up 
from a dream, called out " Owanux ! Owanux ! " 
(Englishmen.) Still there was no general alarm 
within the fort until the assaulting party fired a 
volley through the palisade, which was answered 
by a terrified yell from the awakened garrison. 
The piles of bushes which served for gates were 
torn down, and the English swarmed through into 
the fort, but still the Pequots remained within 
their wigwams. Mason, after entering, stood in 
the main street and saw not an Indian in it to the 
other side of the fort. Every wigwam which was 
entered, however, became the stage for a desperate 
hand-to-hand struggle. Some of the Pequots began 
to shoot from the wigwam doors ; and Mason, 
shouting " We must burn them," touched a fire- 
brand to the mats which covered a neighboring 
hut. The fire, fanned hj a rising northeaster, 
spread through the fort ; Underhill on the other 
side aided it with gunpowder ; and soon the at- 
tacking party was forced to hurry out of the fur- 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 39 

nace heat. There was no such privilege for the 
hated Pequots. In an hour, from four to six hun- 
dred of them were roasted to death, seven being 
taken prisoners, and seven breaking through the 
line and escaping. From one hundred and fifty to 
two hundred of the Indians were warriors ; the 
rest were old men, women and children. 

It is true that two of Mason's party were killed, 
and about twenty wounded, in the whole struggle, 
but many of the recorded casualties bear strong 
testimony to the disadvantages under which the 
Indians fought. Some of the men were saved 
from arrow wounds by their neck-cloths : when 
so slight a buckler was sufficient, the force of the 
weapon could not have been very terrible. Sim- 
ilarly, a piece of cheese in the pocket of another 
was enough to intercept an arrow in its deadly 
flight. In recounting the subsequent attack upon 
the retreating party, Underhill contemptuously 
says that the Pequots fought with the Mohegans 
and Narragansetts in such a manner that neither 
would have killed seven men in seven years. The 
arrow was shot into the air at such an elevation 
as to drop on an adversary, if the adversary had 
not sufficient forethought to step out of the way ; 
and each arrow was retained until the result of its 
predecessor was ascertained. The English regu- 
larly avoided the weapon, then picked it up and 
broke it, and thus gradually exhausted the ammu- 
nition of the enemy. Savages though they were, 



40 CONNECTICUT. 

it is pitiful to think of human beings, locked up 
in a furnace by a circle of guns and keen-tempered 
swords, and forced to rely on such weapons as the 
fallacious Indian arrow. And yet to the last the 
Pequots crawled up to the palisade and shot their 
impotent bolts at their inaccessible foe. 

Mason's thorough-going massacre of men, wo- 
men and children has been compared to Arnold's 
butchery at New London, long afterward, to Ma- 
son's manifest disadvantage, since Arnold at least 
did not burn the village, drive the women and 
children back into the flames, and roast them in 
the ashes of their homes. The comparison is un- 
fair. Arnold had not the slightest reason to ap- 
prehend from the women and children of New 
London such treatment as Mason knew that the 
Indian squaws and children would mete out to his 
men if they were defeated and captured. In the 
gray of the opening morning, while Indian men 
and women, hardly to be distinguished from one 
another by their dress and appearance, were vying 
with one another in the ferocity of their resist- 
ance, it was practically impossible for Mason's 
men to make distinction. To say this is not to 
assert that they were under a controlling desire 
to make such a distinction. On the contrary, 
probably not a man of them but was there under 
the religious confidence that the Pequots were 
acting the part of the Canaanites in resisting the 
children of Israel, and that a similar fate was 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 41 

their proper portion. In this they probably dif- 
fered from Benedict Arnold. Much as we may 
regret that Endicott's unpardonable raid had de- 
cided that Sassacus was to be the enemy of the 
colonists, and the disreputable Uncas their friend 
and ally, this decision, when reached, had no pos- 
sible result but the complete overthrow of the Pe- 
quots. It is easy to talk of sparing non-combat- 
ants, but not easy to apply it to a case in which 
the non-combatants insist on fighting to the death. 
Nevertheless, it is a truth that there is no feature 
in the history of the commonwealth which is more 
unpleasant reading than the conduct of the Pequot 
war from its causeless outbreak down to its con- 
clusion. 

Hiring some of his generous Narragansett allies 
to carry the wounded, Mason now began a retreat 
to his vessels, which were just sailing into what is 
now New London harbor, but half a dozen miles 
away. By this time, nearly the whole remaining 
power of the Pequot tribe had gathered at the 
ruins of the fort. The chroniclers calmly state 
the details of the ecstasy of rage into which the 
sight of their slaughtered comrades threw them ; 
they note with a curious interest, as if speaking of 
the almost human affection of a she-bear robbed 
of her whelps, how the Pequots stamped, shrieked, 
tore their hair, and finally rushed down the hill to 
charge the rear of the retiring column. But — 
alas for all excuses for the expedition ! — they also 



42 CONNECTICUT. 

note that a rear guard of a dozen men was suffi- 
cient to repulse all the assaults of two thirds of 
the whole Pequot power. The English force 
reached the vessels without difficulty, finding 
there Captain Patrick and the Massachusetts con- 
tingent. Putting the wounded on the ships, the 
uninjured men returned in triumph by land to 
Say brook. 

The last council of the Pequot nation was held 
on the day following the capture of the fort. It 
is not difficult to imagine the feeling of the par- 
ticipants. They had proved, even to themselves, 
that it was impossible for them to resist the stran- 
gers in the field ; and it seems to have been as im- 
possible for them to conceive the notion of surren- 
der. Having first put to death every relative of 
Uncas within their reach, they came to a Roman 
resolution. The route by which they had origi- 
nally entered Connecticut was now blocked by 
the new English towns ; but there was a possible 
road of return along the Sound, where there were 
as yet no settlements. Burning their villages and 
crops, they set out on their desperate venture. 
Thirty of the men, with many of the women and 
children, soon abandoned it and returned to their 
old home, where they took refuge in a swamp. 
Toward the end of June, a Massachusetts party of 
one hundred and twenty men under Stoughton 
was guided to their hiding place by the Narragan- 
setts, who had not ventured to attack them, but 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 43 

said they were " holding them " for the English. 
The Pequots met their fate calmly and without 
resistance. All the men were put to death in 
cold blood with the exception of two, who prom- 
ised to guide the party to the hiding place of Sas- 
sacus ; and even these, proving unwilling to fulfill 
their bargain, were subsequently killed. Thirty- 
three of the eighty women were presented to the 
Indian allies ; the remainder were sent to Massa- 
chusetts and sold as slaves. 

The main body of the tribe pursued their march 
for the Hudson under Sassacus and Mononotto. 
While crossing the Connecticut, they came upon 
three white men in a canoe, killed them after a 
stout resistance, and hung their bodies on the 
trees upon the shore. After passing Saybrook, 
they were driven by lack of supplies to take a 
route close to the shore, in order to dig shell-fish. 
Such circumstances were not favorable for a forced 
march ; the daily journeys grew shorter ; and that 
keen-scented hound, Uncas, was on their track. 
Stoughton's men had joined Mason, and the com- 
bined force had taken ship at Saybrook to pursue 
by the Sound, while Uncas and his men searched 
the shore. Stragglers from the main body were 
occasionally met, and one incident will indicate 
their fate. Near Guilford, a Pequot chief with a 
few men was sighted. Escaping from view for a 
few minutes, the fugitives hid at the end of the 
cape which juts out from the eastern side of the 



44 CONNECTICUT. 

harbor. Uncas searched the opposite side of the 
harbor, but sent part of his men to search the 
eastern cape. Driven from their refuge, the Pe- 
quots swam across the harbor and were shot as 
they landed by the Mohegans. Uncas cut off the 
head of the Pequot chief and lodged it in the 
branches of an oak, where it hung for years, giv- 
ing the place the local name of Sachem's Head. 

About the time when the pursuers had reached 
the place where the town of Fairfield was after- 
wards planted, a Pequot was captured who was 
found willing, in return for life, to engage to kill 
or betray Sassacus. He kept his agreement. He 
joined the main body, and, when suspected and 
forced to flee, brought back word that the main 
body of the Pequots had taken post in a swamp, 
the stronghold of a local sachem, near Greenfield 
Hill. The untiring pursuers set out at once for 
the place, some twenty-five miles away, found it, 
and undertook to surround the swamp. There 
were really two swamps, a larger and a smaller, 
separated by a neck of firm ground covered with 
bushes. After a hand-to-hand struggle, the be- 
siegers succeeded in cutting down the bushes and 
reducing the coverts to one, which their numbers 
were sufficient to surround efficiently. A call for 
surrender was then sent in. It was accepted by 
the local tribe on whose hospitality the Pequots 
had forced themselves, and by the women and 
children of the Pequots, so that the number of the 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 45 

besieged was reduced from three hundred to one 
hundred. Those who were left were the picked 
men of the tribe. They saw before them the 
strangers who had suddenly flung them from their 
supremacy to their present position, and they had 
a savage preference of death to surrender. They 
rushed so furiously on the messenger that the 
English found difficulty in rescuing him. All 
night long they crept up to the border of the 
swamp and shot their ineffectual arrows at the 
besiegers ; and in the gray of the next morning 
they made their last burst for freedom. In a heavy 
fog they rushed on that part of the English line 
commanded by Patrick, and the fight at once be- 
came so furious that the rest of the English force 
had to be brought up to Patrick's assistance. In 
the confusion, about seventy of the hundred Pe- 
quots burst through and got off ; but many of them 
were found dead in the pursuit. The subsequent 
course of the survivors is not known. There is a 
tradition that they made their way to the moun- 
tainous region of western North Carolina, and 
that, forty years afterward, the intelligence of 
King Philip's war brought them or their children 
as far north as Virginia, on their way back to 
strike another blow at the English, when they 
were stopped by hearing of Philip's death. 

Sassacus and Mononotto had left their tribe 
before the swamp fight, either overwhelmed with 
unpopularity, or unable to spur the remainder of 



46 CONNECTICUT. 

the tribe to the necessary celerity of movement. 
Their party of thirty or forty men escaped to the 
Mohawks ; but their new hosts put them all to 
death, sending their scalps to the English to relieve 
them from further anxiety. Only Mononotto es- 
caped, and it is not known what became of him. 
His wife, with her children, was among the cap- 
tives at the swamp. It is pleasant to record that 
she had been very kind to the two captured Eng- 
lish girls, and that Governor Winthrop gave di- 
rections that she should be treated with corre- 
sponding kindness. All the prisoners, even in- 
cluding the wife of Mononotto, were made slaves, 
some being kept in Connecticut, and others sent 
to Massachusetts or the West Indies. They 
proved, however, most unsatisfactory slaves, and 
their servitude was in almost every case soon ter- 
minated by death. 

The downfall of the Pequots inured largely to 
the benefit of Uncas. Many of the original tribe 
took membership in the Mohegan branch, though 
some preferred to join the Narragansetts or the 
Long Island Indians. It was not long before the 
jealous Narragansetts called Uncas to account be- 
fore the equally jealous colonists for harboring 
Pequots to such an extent as to make his own 
power a source of possible danger. An investiga- 
tion showed that there were still at large some 
two hundred Pequots, half of which number were 
given to Uncas and the rest to the Narragansett 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 47 

chiefs. Late in 1638, the delicate negotiation was 
closed by a treaty between the Connecticut dele- 
gates, Miantonomoh for the Narragansetts, and 
Uncas. The two high contracting Indian parties 
were to retain their respective Pequots, paying an 
annual tribute for them and incorporating them 
into their tribes. Connecticut was to have all the 
territory formerly occupied by the Pequots, and 
was to act as umpire in any quarrel between Un- 
cas and Miantonomoh. The former lords of the 
soil had disappeared, and the stranger had taken 
their place. 

The tripartite treaty of 1638 settled the su- 
premacy of the English for the future. Purchases 
of lands from the Indians went on with increasing 
frequency until prohibited by the general court 
in 1663. Even Uncas was unwary enough to 
make such transfers ; and in one of them, in 1640, 
in return for " five and a half yards of trucking 
cloth, with stockings and other things," he is said 
to have transferred to the commonwealth his 
whole territory, covering the whole northern por- 
tion of New London County, with the southern 
portion of Tolland and Windham counties. The 
Mohegans, however, insisted that the transaction 
was only a covenant to sell their lands to no white 
men without first giving the commonwealth an 
opportunity to buy, and their claims were a long- 
standing source of difficulty. 

Miantonomoh was not satisfied with the treaty 



48 CONNECTICUT. 

of 1638. It is not probable that he would have 
been permanently satisfied with any treaty which 
left the parvenu Uncas in the position of a great 
chief. An attack made by Uncas upon a chief 
related to Miantonomoh furnished an opportune 
casus belli. With a discretion worthy of a more 
highly civilized monarch, Miantonomoh postponed 
the declaration of, war to the more urgent neces- 
sity of making war. The whole power of the 
Narragansetts was secretly set in motion for the 
Mohegan country. Uncas was not asleep. His 
runners saw the host of the enemy crossing a ford, 
and carried the intelligence to their chief at his 
fort near the present city of Norwich. When the 
Narragansetts found the lair of the Mohegan chief, 
they found that they had to deal with the whole 
strength of his tribe, which he had had time to 
call in. 

Uncas had felt himself strong enough to ad- 
vance a few miles, though he had but half the 
force of his enemy, for he relied with confidence 
on the mingling of unscrupulous treachery and 
headlong courage which had been the Pequot title 
to the soil from the beginning. He signaled for 
a parley as soon as the Narragansetts came within 
hearing, and, meeting the Narragansett chief be- 
tween the lines, appealed to him to prevent a 
needless effusion of blood by a single combat of 
the leaders. Miantonomoh rejected the proposal, 
perhaps with some contempt, and Uncas at once 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 49 

gave the signal for which his men had been wait- 
ing, by dropping prone upon the ground. His 
men instantly poured a flight of arrows upon the 
Narragansetts, and followed it by a charge, which 
Uncas rose and headed. The battle lasted but a 
moment ; the Narragansetts fled, almost without 
striking a blow; and Miantonomoh, deserted by 
his people and over-weighted by an English corse- 
let, was caught, after a long chase, by Uncas and 
one of his sachems. The captive kept a stolid si- 
lence, refusing to beg for mercy, even by gesture. 

The tender mercies of Uncas would doubtless 
have been swift to visit Miantonomoh but for one 
circumstance. The Rhode Island settlers were 
not forgetful of the benefits which they had re- 
ceived at the hands of the Narragansetts ; and one 
of them, Gorton, of Warwick, sent Uncas a violent 
message, threatening him with English vengeance 
if he injured Miantonomoh. Uncas, unable to dis- 
criminate clearly between English sectaries or to 
balance the respective power of white faces, carried 
his prisoner to Hartford for trial. The governor 
and magistrates referred him to the commissioners 
of the united colonies, who were to meet at Boston 
in the following September. Until then, Mianto- 
nomoh remained at Hartford. 

The commissioners, much as they dreaded Mian- 
tonomoh, did not see their way clear to condemning 
him to death. In the emergency they summoned 
into council five of the delegates to a synod then 



50 CONNECTICUT. 

sitting at Boston. These counselors rode rough- 
shod over the scruples which had given pause to 
the lay mind. To them the Narragansett was a 
Philistine, an Amalekite, who was of necessity- 
guilty. They decided that he must die, and the 
commissioners acquiesced in the decision. They 
directed the Connecticut authorities to give him 
up to Uncas for execution outside of the common- 
wealth's jurisdiction, to detail witnesses to see that 
all should be done in order, and to defend Uncas 
against any threatened vengeance for the act. 
The most shocking attendant circumstance is the 
fact that the announcement of the sentence was 
postponed until the Connecticut commissioners had 
safely reached Hartford, for the reason that Mian- 
tonomoh himself had given notice that his people 
intended to capture them on the way and hold 
them as hostages for his safety. It is no wonder 
that so dangerous a chieftain should find no mercy. 
The Narragansett chief' was delivered to the 
custody of Uncas, two Englishmen joining the 
party to be witnesses to the execution. When the 
Mohegans had reached the scene of the battle near 
Norwich, Uncas gave a signal to his brother, Wa- 
wequa, whose place was just behind the captive. 
He at once sunk his hatchet into Miantonomoh's 
brain, and death followed instantly. Uncas de- 
voured a piece of flesh cut from the dead man's 
shoulder, declaring it the sweetest meat he had 
ever eaten. 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 51 

The only serious difficulties with Indians there- 
after were in the southwest, and were really off- 
shoots from the continual troubles between the 
Dutch and the Indians. There were several mur- 
ders and savage assaults, the most notable victim 
being Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, 
who had settled near Stamford, and was killed, 
with some seventeen others, in a night attack 
by the Indians. The Narragansetts seem to have 
taken no concerted part in this border warfare. 
They had come to despair of making head against 
the whites ; and their hopes of revenge were con- 
centrated on Uncas and his tribe, upon whom they 
made repeated attacks. Their only results were 
renewed and increased fines and tribute imposed 
by the white supporters of Uncas. About 1658 
these attacks ceased, and the Narragansetts re- 
signed themselves to their fate. 

The chiefs to whom Pequots had been assigned, 
and especially Uncas, were so greedy and tyran- 
nical in their rule that the conquered people began 
to drift away from them and form scattered and 
illegal communities. One or two of their new 
chiefs showed themselves good friends of the Eng- 
lish ; and in 1655 the New England commissioners, 
to Uncas's unconcealed disgust, consented to a re- 
organization of the Pequots into two tribes under 
chieftains of their own blood, Hermon Garret and 
Cassasinamon. In 1667 the colony established a 
reservation for Cassasinamon's tribe in the present 



52 CONNECTICUT. 

township of Leonard, near Groton ; and in 1683 a 
settlement was assigned to the other tribe in North 
Stonington. The original force of the Pequot has 
been persistent enough to carry their descendants, 
after a fashion, through the intervening years in 
which the subject tribes have disappeared. In 
1850 the Ledyard settlement held 989 acres, and 
the North Stonington settlement 240, with a mon- 
grel population of twenty-eight and fifteen persons 
respectively. In 1880 the county of New London 
still held the largest proportion of the Connecti- 
cut " Indians," 147 out of a total of 255 in the 
State. 

As the record of Indian difficulties ends with the 
death of Miantonomoh, the record of Indian deca- 
dence begins. Individuals, under the tacit or ex- 
press authorization of the general court, bought 
lands of the Indian proprietors; and the early 
town records begin with deeds given by a number 
of sachems, whose unutterable names are only a 
little less awe-inspiring than the hieroglyphics by 
which they are indicated, transferring their lands 
to whites for the pettiest considerations. Real 
property titles in the State are traced back to 
these Indian deed's. When a tribe had entirely 
gotten rid of the inheritance, its few remaining 
members drifted off to other parts of the country, 
or became a town charge as paupers. But the 
general court was careful so to limit these trans- 
fers as not to drive the few dangerous tribes to 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 53 

desperation, and the good results were seen in the 
outbreak of King Philip's war in 1675. The 
Connecticut Indians left the colony free to bend 
all its energies to the assistance of the sister col- 
onies. Even the Pequots and Mohegans were 
faithful allies and soldiers, and enjoyed the Indian 
luxuries of seeing the final overthrow of the Nar- 
ragansetts, and of executing Canonchet, the son 
of Miantonomoh. 

Uncas died about 1683. Two of his alleged 
descendants were living in 1800. His tribe and 
its successive chiefs seem to have found a fatal fas- 
cination in the process of land transfer, which they 
never could master. Drunken sachems made trans- 
fers of land which was really the common property 
of the tribe ; or the tribe, having a well-founded 
apprehension of the sachem's weakness for strong 
drink, made clumsy attempts to make trust deeds 
of their lands to white men in whom they confided, 
while the trustees considered these instruments as 
transfers of the fee simple. The result was abun- 
dant litigation ; and some of the commonwealth 
difficulties arising from it will be considered here- 
after. In 1721 a committee of the general court 
examined and decided on these transfers, reserving 
some 5,000 acres to the Mohegans, and making the 
tract inalienable so long as a single Mohegan 
should survive. This arrangement was practi- 
cally confirmed by royal commissions in 1737 and 
1743. on appeal by the Indians. The tribe sent 



54 CONNECTICUT. 

many of its number into the American army dur- 
ing the Revolution, and some eighteen of them 
were killed. In 1786 a few of the survivors, with 
other Connecticut Indians, went to the Oneida 
country, in New York, and there established the 
Brothertown tribe. There remained to the tribe 
in 1850 some 2,300 acres of its reservation at 
Montville, with some sixty persons living on it, 
and about the same number scattered in other 
parts of the country. 

However we may discredit the accounts given 
by the first settlers of Indian immorality, it is im- 
possible to exaggerate their subsequent degrada- 
tion. Ignorant, poverty-stricken, unclean, drunken, 
and licentious to the lowest degree, the smaller 
Indian tribes disappeared with startling rapidity. 
In 1680 there were but five hundred warriors left 
in the whole colony. In 1774 there were only 
eight left in Greenwich, nine in Norwalk, and 
none in Stamford. There is not now a drop of 
pure Indian blood in the State. The so-called In- 
dians are the progeny of two centuries of irregular 
intercourse between Indians, negroes, mulattoes, 
and whites. 

Efforts have not been wanting to civilize or 
evangelize the race, but they have been of little 
avail. Pierson, Fitch, and Barber preached to 
them with hardly any perceptible result ; Gookin 
and John Eliot entered the colony for the same 
purpose, but withdrew defeated; and the only 



THE PEQUOT WAR. 55 

effort which ever came to anything like success 
met it outside of Connecticut. Eleazar Wheelock 
began preaching at Lebanon in 1735. In 1762 
his Indian school numbered twenty, and he went 
to England to raise funds for it, developing it into 
what became Dartmouth College. Among his 
Connecticut pupils he had received in 1743 a Mo- 
ll egan aged twenty, who took the name of Samson 
Occom. After an irregular education and service 
as teacher on Long Island and elsewhere, Occom 
was ordained in 1759 by the presbytery of Suffolk, 
L. I., and became a successful preacher. He 
stands out as about the only civilized product of 
Connecticut Indian origin ; and even he occasion- 
ally relapsed into intoxication, to his own bitter 
repentance. He made a part of the Brothertown 
tribe, and died among its members in 1792. 

There is little room or excuse for romance in the 
Indian history of the commonwealth ; and it has 
seemed best to bring it down to its conclusion at 
once, in order to confine the subsequent story of 
the commonwealth to the history of the dom- 
inant race. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 

When the Pequot war broke out, there were 
but three English settlements within the present 
area of Connecticut. Leaving Massachusetts, the 
Connecticut River flows to the southwest and then 
to the southeast, forming two sides of a very ob- 
tuse and irregular angle. At the apex of this 
angle, and on the western side of the river, was 
planted the town of Newtown (the present capital 
city of Hartford). On the same side of the river 
were Dorchester (Windsor), a few miles above 
Hartford, and Watertown (Wethersfield), a few 
miles below Hartford. To the north, and just be- 
yond the Massachusetts boundary line, was Aga- 
wam (Springfield), Pynchon's settlement ; but it 
was not known for some years whether it was in 
or beyond the jurisdiction of the mother colony. 
Until this was ascertained, this town was taken 
and deemed to be a part of Connecticut. The 
first settlers had no notion of leaving government 
behind them when they left Massachusetts. The 
migration took place under direction of eight 
persons, headed by Roger Ludlow and William 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 57 

Pynchon, acting under the commission from the 
Massachusetts General Court, which was to be in 
force for only one year. By the time it expired, 
the new colony had begun its own system of gov- 
ernment. 

The meeting of the first legislative body, the 
" Corte," was held at Newtown, April 26, 1636. 
The three migrating towns at first retained even 
their Massachusetts names, and this inchoate com- 
monwealth government was little more than a 
consequence of the Massachusetts commission. It 
was not until February 21 of the next year that 
the name of Hartford was substituted for that of 
Newtown, that of Wethersfield for Watertown, 
and that of Windsor for Dorchester. The name 
of Hartford was probably meant to commemorate 
the birthplace of Mr. Stone, Hertford, near Lon- 
don. Windsor was taken from its English name- 
sake ; and Wethersfield was named from Wethers- 
field in Essex, England, the birthplace of one of 
the leading men of the settlement, John Talcott, 
commonly called " Tailcoat " in the records. For 
a year the court met at the three towns in turn, 
two magistrates from each town making up its 
number, except when Pynchon was present and 
raised the number to seven. Like all the com- 
monwealth legislatures of New England, this one 
exercised both legislative and judicial functions, 
taking from the latter its title of the " Corte," 
afterwards the " General Court," as in the Massa- 



58 CONNECTICUT. 

chusetts charter. For the first year its proceed- 
ings were confined to the prevention of the trade 
in muskets with the Indians, the enforcement of 
military drill, the regulation of swine and other 
animals, the appointment of constables, some pro- 
bate business, and one suit at law, that of a land 
claimant against the people of Wethersfield. 

On May 1, 1637, the legislature, now first called 
the General Court, met at Hartford in a form more 
fitting for a separate commonwealth. In addition 
to the six magistrates there were now present 
nine " committees," or deputies, three from each 
town. Hooker, in his letter to Winthrop, states 
that the " committees " were chosen by the towns ; 
that they met at Hartford, elected the six magis- 
trates, and gave them an oath of office. The mi- 
gratory commission from Massachusetts was thus 
supplanted by a new government, deriving its 
authority directly from the towns. In the dis- 
tinction between deputies and magistrates, slight 
at first, there was the germ of the commonwealth's 
subsequent bi-cameral system. Springfield was 
represented occasionally during 1637-38, and her 
affairs were considered to be under the jurisdiction 
of the new colony. For the next two years Spring- 
field is neither represented nor referred to, the 
general court confining its attention to the other 
three towns. On June 2, 1641, the Massachusetts 
General Court recognized Springfield, on petition 
therefrom, as one of its towns, and appointed com- 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 59 

missioners to define the boundary line between 
the two colonies. 

The General Court, under its new constitution, 
at once assumed a wider range of action. Its first 
meeting declared war against the Pequots ; its 
second, June 2, 1637, ordered a draft of thirty men 
u to sett downe in the Pequoitt Countrey and 
River in place convenient to mayntaine o r right y* 
God by Conquest hath given to vs." At the 
meeting June 26, it was decided that Haynes and 
Ludlow should " parle with the bay [Massachu- 
setts] about o r settinge downe in the Pequoitt 
Countrey." For Massachusetts had advanced a 
claim to the Pequot soil, based partly on the ex- 
ceedingly hazy geography of the time, and partly 
on conquest ; while Connecticut had a keen per- 
ception that this section was essential to her com- 
monwealth's development, and meant to hold it. 
In the end her determination prevailed, and she 
still keeps the Pequot country. 

It would hardly be too strong to say that the 
establishment of the town and of the church was 
coincident : the universal agreement in religion 
made town government and church government 
but two sides of the same medal, and the same 
persons took part in both. In fact, the three orig- 
inal settlements had entered the new territory not 
only as completely organized towns, but as com- 
pletely organized churches, only one (Watertown) 
having left its minister behind. The original 



60 CONNECTICUT. 

church of Watertown is therefore still in Massa- 
chusetts ; the original churches of Cambridge 
(Newtown) and Dorchester are now in Hartford 
and Windsor. For nearly a century (until 1727) 
the same persons in each town discussed and de- 
cided ecclesiastical and civil affairs indifferently, 
acting as a town or a church meeting. The same 
body laid the taxes, called the minister, and pro- 
vided for his salary. When the gradual recogni- 
tion of other sects reduced the Congregational 
order from its exclusive to a merely predominant 
position in the commonwealth, a trace of the old 
system remained in the Congregational churches 
in the dual control of the " church and society " 
in each congregation, — the former, composed of 
church-members, having ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; 
the latter, composed of pew-holders and contribu- 
tors, having a financial and administrative control, 
and joint action of the two being usually neces- 
sary. The " society " represents the former town 
meeting. The Connecticut churches agreed with 
those of Massachusetts in their Congregational 
system ; and their pastors and teachers were called 
upon again and again to make the journey through 
the wilderness to Boston, in order to take part in 
the synods made necessary by the vexed questions 
of Puritan belief and practice. Connecticut, how- 
ever, did not agree with Massachusetts in making 
church-membership a prerequisite to voting and 
holding office. In this omission, it maintained 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 61 

the complete independence both of its churches 
and of its towns ; but it gave rise to many of its 
subsequent ecclesiastical difficulties. It was largely 
a dispute on this point that had sent the first set- 
tlers into the wilderness, and the original three 
towns would undoubtedly have insisted on local 
freedom in this respect. When new towns were 
formed, offshoots from the first three, it was nat- 
ural in the eyes of both town and colony that this 
freedom should be continued to them, and none of 
them desired any ecclesiastical restriction on the 
right of suffrage. Those who desired such an ar- 
rangement went into the New Haven jurisdiction, 
of which it was an essential part. 

The independence of the town was a political 
fact which has colored the whole history of the 
commonwealth, and, through it, of the United 
States. Even in Massachusetts, after the real be- 
ginning of government, the town was subordinate 
to the colony ; arid, though the independence of 
the churches . forced a considerable local freedom 
there, it was not so fundamental a fact as in Con- 
necticut. Here the three original towns had in 
the beginning left commonwealth control behind 
them when they left the parent colony. They had 
gone into the wilderness, each the only organized 
political power within its jurisdiction. Since their 
prototypes, the little tuns of the primeval German 
forest, there had been no such examples of the 
perfect capacity of the political cell, the " town," 



62 CONNECTICUT. 

for self-government. In Connecticut it was the 
towns that created the commonwealth ; and the 
consequent federative idea has steadily influenced 
the colony and State alike. In Connecticut, the 
governing principle, due to the original constitu- 
tion of things rather than to the policy of the 
commonwealth, has been that the town is the re- 
siduary legatee of political power ; that it is the 
State which is called upon to make out a clear 
case for powers to which it lays claim ; and that 
the towns have a primd facie case in their favor 
wherever a doubt arises. 

All this is so like the standard theory of the 
relations of the States to the federal government 
that it is necessary to notice the peculiar exact- 
ness with which the relations of Connecticut towns 
to the commonwealth are proportioned to the re- 
lations of the commonwealth to the United States. 
In other States, power runs from the State up- 
wards and from the State downwards ; in Connec- 
ticut, the towns have always been to the common- 
wealth as the commonwealth to the Union. It 
was to be the privilege of Connecticut to keep the 
notion of this federal relation alive until it could 
be made the fundamental law of all the common- 
wealths in 1787-89. In this respect, the life prin- 
ciple of the American Union may be traced 
straight back to the primitive union of the three 
little settlements on the bank of the Connecticut 
River. All this, however, may be left to the 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 63 

chapter on the Convention of 1787. The point in 
question here is the introduction of the democratic 
element into the American system, and the claims 
of Connecticut to the credit or responsibility for 
it. 

The first constitution of Connecticut — the first 
written constitution, in the modern sense of the 
term, as a permanent limitation on governmental 
power, known in history, and certainly the first 
American constitution of government to embody 
the democratic idea — was adopted by a general 
assembly, or popular convention, of the planters 
of the three towns, held at Hartford, January 14, 
1638 (9). The common opinion is that democ- 
racy came into the American system through the 
compact made in the cabin of the Mayflower, 
though that instrument was based on no political 
principle whatever, and began with a formal ac- 
knowledgment of the king as the source of all 
authority. It was the power of the crown " by 
virtue " of which " equal laws " were to be en- 
acted, and the " covenant " was merely a make- 
shift to meet a temporary emergency: it had 
not a particle of political significance, nor was 
democracy an impelling force in it. It must be 
admitted that the Plymouth system was acci- 
dentally democratic, but it was from the absence 
of any great need for government, or for care 
to preserve homogeneity in religion, not from po- 
litical purpose, as in Connecticut. It was a pas- 



64 CONNECTICUT. 

sive, not an active system ; and it cannot be said 
to have influenced other American common- 
wealths. Another though less prevalent opinion 
is, that the first democratic commonwealth was 
the mother colony of Massachusetts Bay. The 
intensely democratic feeling subsequently devel- 
oped in Massachusetts has been reflected on her 
early history, and has given it a light which never 
belonged to it. On the contrary, it is not difficult 
to show that the settlement of Connecticut was it- 
self merely a secession of the democratic element 
from Massachusetts, and that the Massachusetts 
freemen owed their final emancipation from a the- 
ocracy to the example given them by the eldest 
daughter of the old commonwealth. 

He who studies carefully the history of Massa- 
chusetts from 1629 until 1690 will see that there 
was a constant struggle in that colony between 
two conflicting forces, and that its earlier phases 
were coincident and complicated with the Connec- 
ticut secession. The better blood of the colony 
was determined to establish a privileged class of 
some sort ; and the bulk of the freemen, instinc- 
tively inclined to democracy, found it difficult to 
resist the claims of blood, wealth, and influence, 
backed by the pronounced support of the church. 
For the ministers of the colony, in spite of their 
evidently conscientious wish to separate church and 
state, seem to have had no notion of the real boun- 
daries between the two, and were constantly in 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 65 

favor of measures which tended straight to the 
establishment of an oligarchy. Whenever the 
dominant class desired to overcome the rising op- 
position of the commons, the readiest and surest 
means was to offer to submit the question to the 
decision of the " elders," or ministers. The com- 
mons never ventured to refuse ; and the ministers 
never failed to decide in accordance with the 
wishes of the dominant class. The expressions of 
dissenting writers, as to the " spiritual tyranny " 
in early Massachusetts, must be taken always with 
very large allowance. Ecclesiastical punishments 
were not severe, according to the universal stand- 
ard of the times ; and the result of hostile research 
seems curiously inadequate to the indignation 
which has been spent in it. But one must admit 
that the early Massachusetts system, whatever 
else it may have been, was not even meant to be 
a democracy. " Democracy," said Cotton, the 
spokesman of the dominant class, " I do not con- 
ceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government 
either for church or commonwealth." 

The question appeared with the transfer of the 
charter government from England to Massachu- 
setts. The charter gave to the governor, eighteen 
assistants, and the freemen, assembled in a single 
chamber as the " great and general Court," the 
power of electing officers and making laws and 
ordinances. The dominant class of the colony 
was determined to restrict this general court 

5 



66 CONNECTICUT. 

which the superior numbers of the freemen could 
control, to the functions of a mere electing body, 
leaving to the assistants, what the charter did not 
give them, the duties of making and enforcing 
laws. The first meeting of the Court of Assist- 
ants in Massachusetts made the support of the 
clergy a commonwealth matter; the second as- 
sumed control of the admission of inhabitants to 
the towns ; and, early in 1632, the settlement of 
town boundaries, and the control of town inter- 
ests, were assumed by the assistants without any 
authority, either from the charter or from the 
towns. Secular and ecclesiastical influences were 
strong enough to induce the freemen, in 1630, to 
confirm the usurped powers of the Court of Assist- 
ants ; and this was followed in the next year by 
the exclusion of all but church-members from 
" the liberties of the Commonwealth," that is, 
from voting. So wide was the effect that Hut- 
chinson asserts, and Judge Story approves the esti- 
mate, that five-sixths of the people were still dis- 
franchised as late as 1676. The whole system 
was upheld by Governor Winthrop of Massachu- 
setts, in a letter to Hooker, on the ground that it 
was unwarrantable and unsafe to refer matters 
"of counsel or judicature" to the body of the 
people, because " the best part is always the least, 
and of that best part the wiser part is always the 
lesser." The people, or that better part of them 
who should be admitted to vote, were to choose 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 67 

the Court of Assistants ; but that wiser body was 
to make the laws and enforce them. 

Such a system was certain to arouse dissatisfac- 
tion ; and a due regard to the fact will make it 
easier to understand why the Massachusetts char- 
ter was finally lost so tamely. Dissatisfaction, to 
the honor of the Massachusetts freemen, first took 
the shape of assertion of local liberty, of town 
freedom rather than of individual freedom. There 
were attempts at independent town action before 
1634 ; but the curious and perhaps significant fact 
is that nearly all of them took place in the three 
towns which afterwards made up the Connecticut 
secession. The towns in 1634 informally sent two 
deputies each to Boston to get a sight of the pa- 
tent. The sight was enough to expose the usur- 
pation of the assistants ; and at the general court 
in May the freemen would make no elections un- 
til their deputies had been recognized as a factor 
in the government. Nevertheless, influence, and 
particularly that of the ministers, was still strong 
enough to secure the passage of an act, the very 
next year, constituting a council for life, consisting 
at first of three members, but meant to be larger 
in future. There is every indication of an organ- 
ized design to establish an hereditary order, or at 
least a life privilege for certain classes, in order 
to attract influential and wealthy immigrants from 
the mother country ; but luckily Massachusetts 
freemen knew how to cut the knot. When it 



68 CONNECTICUT. 

was proposed in 1639 to give the governor a life 
tenure, the freemen answered by taking all "mag- 
istratical" powers from the council, and that body 
died the death soon after. Time would fail in 
telling the further details of the struggle, — the 
success of the deputies in maintaining that share in 
the government which the charter had not given 
them ; the efforts of the assistants to secure the 
" negative voice," by which they were to have a 
veto on the deputies ; the famous " sow business," 
which convulsed the colony, and brought the 
"negative voice" into common disrepute;- and the 
final compromise in 1644, by which the introduc- 
tion of a bi-cameral system gave both the assistants 
and the deputies a negative voice. All these be- 
long to Massachusetts history, and were the efforts 
of democracy to get its head out of water. 

In every point, the ministers had been on the 
side of the assistants. The latter had always been 
willing to refer every disputed question to the el- 
ders, and had always been supported. The stand- 
ing grievance had been that the assistants would 
not admit the right of the general court (which 
really meant the deputies, or the freemen whom 
they represented) to adopt a body of laws as a 
permanent limitation on the judicial powers of the 
assistants ; they wished to decide every case " on 
its own merits." Winthrop himself acknowledged, 
in 1689, that the people " had long desired a body 
of laws, and thought their condition very unsafe 



TEE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 69 

while so much power rested in the discretion 
of magistrates ; " and he adds the very credible 
note that the magistrates and some of the minis- 
ters were " not very forward in this matter." In 
December, 1641, a brief code of laws was extorted 
by the freemen ; but it left great blanks, which 
the assistants still persisted in filling as they saw 
fit. In 1645 the elders formally declared that the 
freemen were to choose the assistants, but that the 
authority of the latter was not derived from the 
freemen or to be limited by them, and that they 
were to decide according to the word of God in 
the absence of express law. The deputies yielded ; 
and it was not until 1649 that they at last secured 
a complete code of laws. 

Reference has already been made to the patent 
differences between the three migrating towns and 
the five which they left behind them, and to the 
probability that there was some political difference 
to account for them. A regard to the coincident 
struggle against class power in Massachusetts will 
make it still more probable that the migrating 
towns were simply those which did not choose to 
continue the struggle longer at home, but pre- 
ferred to establish a more democratic system for 
themselves in the wilderness, and without any 
charter. Hooker was undoubtedly the strength 
of the migration ; and he had been so notoriously 
opposed to Cotton in the old colony that it would 
be reasonable to presume that he differed toto coelo 



70 CONNECTICUT. 

from Cotton's views as to democracy. In answer- 
ing the letter of Winthrop mentioned above, lie 
is evidently cautious, and unwilling to provoke 
an argument; but he dissents from Winthrop's 
entire position, and says : " In matters of greater 
consequence, which concern the common good, a 
general council, chosen by all, to transact busi- 
nesses which concern all, I conceive, under favor, 
most suitable to rule and most safe for relief of 
the whole." The difference between him and 
Winthrop is marked ; and it would not be difficult 
to say, from these two letters, which of them held 
the seed from which sprang the modern American 
commonwealth. Again, the first step of the Con- 
necticut settlers was to secure what their Massa- 
chusetts brethren were still struggling for — pop- 
ular control of legislation. Codes of laws were 
merely the symbol : democracy wanted the recog- 
nition of the deputies, the direct representatives of 
the towns, as a factor in the government ; and this 
was secured by the constitution of 1639. It even 
provided a way by which the deputies, if the gov- 
ernor and the " magistrates " (answering to the 
Massachusetts title of "assistants") refused to call 
them together, might meet and organize a supreme 
legislature without their associates, — a provision 
wholly inexplicable without a careful regard to the 
contemporary struggle in Massachusetts. 

Here the evidence that government "of the 
people, by the people, for the people," first took 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 71 

shape in Connecticut, and that the American form 
of commonwealth originated here, and not in Mas- 
sachusetts, Virginia, or any other colony, might 
well stop. The case in favor of Hooker, however, 
has now an impregnable basis, which was wanting 
when the standard histories of the commonwealth 
were written. His letter to Winthrop might be 
made the foundation of the claim that he had sup- 
plied the spirit of the Connecticut constitution ; 
and yet the basis is an unsatisfactory one. It is 
evident enough that the complete popular control 
over government which was the characteristic of 
the new Connecticut system was neither familiar 
nor welcome at the time in the other Puritan com- 
monwealth ; but the letter alone is not enough to 
establish a connection of this fact with Hooker. 
All this time there has been in existence an abstract 
of a sermon of Hooker's, preached at Hartford, 
May 31, 1638, some seven months before the 
framing of the constitution. Henry Wolcott, Jr., 
of Windsor, had been in the excellent Puritan 
habit of taking notes of the sermons to which he 
listened, and he had left behind him a MS. volume 
of abstracts of Hooker's sermons. Among them 
was this sermon. Dr. J. H. Trumbull saw its im- 
portance and deciphered its short-hand characters. 
Any one who will read this abstract, and try to 
imagine the way in which the writer of the letter 
to Winthrop must have clothed this skeleton with 
flesh and blood, and the effect on his hearers, will 



72 CONNECTICUT. 

appreciate its importance in American history. If 
the germ is potentially the whole development, 
this is the most important profession of political 
faith in our history. It is as follows : — 

Deut. i. 13. — Take you wise men, and understand- 
ing, and known among your tribes, and I will make them 
rulers over you. Captains over thousands, and captains 
over hundreds, over fifties, over tens, etc. 

Doctrine. I. That the choice of public magistrates 
belongs unto the people, by God's own allowance. 

II. The privilege of election, which belongs to the 
people, therefore must not be exercised according to 
their humours, but according to the blessed will and law 
of God. 

III. They who have power to appoint officers and 
magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the bounds 
and limitations of the power and place unto which they 
call them. 

Reasons. 1. Because the foundation of authority is 
laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people. 

2. Because, by a free choice, the hearts of the people 
will be more inclined to the love of the persons chosen 
and more ready to yield obedience. 

3. Because of that duty and engagement of the people. 
Uses. The lesson taught is three-fold : — 

1st. There is matter of thankful acknowledgment in 
the appreciation of God's faithfulness towards us, and 
the permission of these measures that God doth command 
and vouchsafe. 

2dly. Of reproof — to dash the councils of all those 
that shall oppose it. 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 73 

3dly. Of exhortation — to persuade us, as God hath 
given us liberty, to take it. 

And, lastly, as God hath spared our lives, and given 
us them in liberty, so to seek the guidance of God, and 
to choose in God and for God. 

Here is the first practical assertion of the right 
of the people not only to choose but to limit the 
powers of their rulers, an assertion which lies at 
the foundation of the American system. There is 
no reference to a "dread sovereign," no reserva- 
tion of deference due to any class, not even to the 
class to which the speaker himself belonged. Each 
individual was to exercise his rights " according 
to the blessed will and law of God," but he was to 
be responsible to God alone for his fulfillment of 
the obligation. The whole contains the germ of 
the idea of the commonwealth, and it was devel- 
oped by his hearers into the constitution of 1639. 
It is on the banks of the Connecticut, under the 
mighty preaching of Thomas Hooker and in the 
constitution to which he gave life, if not form, 
that we draw the first breath of that atmosphere 
which is now so familiar to us. The birthplace of 
American democracy is Hartford. 

From early times, certainly since 1656, Con- 
necticut has placed upon her common seal vines, 
to represent her towns, at first three for the origi- 
nal towns ; then one for each town ; then, as the 
towns became more numerous, the original three 
again. The stripes on the flag of the United 



74 CONNECTICUT. 

States, increased to fifteen until after the war of 
1812, are a curious parallel. With the vines was 
the significant motto of the commonwealth, at 
first on a scroll held by a hand coming out of a 
cloud, afterwards on a scroll below the vines : QUI 
transtulit sustinbt. The motto was not 
meant as the record of an historical fact alone, 
or as an exclusion of the agency of man from the 
attainment of liberty. The spirit, if not the trans- 
lation, of it is in the third of Hooker's " Uses ".of. 
his lesson, his " exhortation — to persuade us, as 
God hath given us liberty, to take it." This his 
flock proceeded to do in their constitution. 

In the preamble, the inhabitants and residents 
of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, desiring 
to establish an orderly and decent government 
according to God, associated and conjoined them- 
selves to be as one public state or commonwealth, 
for the purposes of maintaining and preserving the 
liberty and purity of the gospel, the discipline of 
the churches, and the orderly conduct of civil 
affairs according to law. There is no mention or 
hint of royal, parliamentary, or proprietary author- 
ity in any part of the constitution, or in the forms 
of oaths for governor, magistrates, and constables 
which make an appendix to it. The ecclesiastical 
excrescence upon it, probably inevitable at the 
time, but absolutely contrary to the spirit of the 
whole instrument, was to remain and trouble the 
commonwealth until the political system came 
fully up to its own original standard in 1818. 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 75 

The constitution gave the general court power 
to " admit of freemen ; " but the right of suffrage 
was given unequivocally, by a subsequent addition 
to the first section, to admitted freemen who had 
taken the oath of fidelity to the commonwealth ; 
and in 1643, to settle the matter, the court declared 
that it understood by "admitted inhabitants" 
those who had been admitted by a town. The 
towns, therefore, retained complete political con- 
trol of their own affairs. No attempt was made 
to define the powers of the towns, for the reason 
that they, being preexistent and theoretically in- 
dependent bodies, had all powers not granted to 
the commonwealth. To avoid any possible ques- 
tion, the general court, at its meeting in the follow- 
ing October, passed a series of orders, securing to 
the towns the powers of selling their lands ; of 
choosing their own officers ; of passing local laws 
with penalties ; of assessing, taxing, and distrain- 
ing for nonpayment ; of choosing a local court of 
three, five, or seven persons, with power to hear 
and determine causes arising between inhabitants 
of the town, and involving not more than forty 
shillings ; of recording titles, bonds, sales and 
mortgages of lands within the town ; and of man- 
aging all probate business arising within the town. 
The really new point introduced by the " orders " 
was the direction to the towns to choose certain 
of their chief inhabitants, not exceeding seven, to 
act as magistrates. Out of this grew rapidly the 



76 CONNECTICUT. 

executive board of the towns known as " select- 
men," who have ever since held almost a dictator- 
ship in their towns during the intervals between 
meetings of their towns, limited by the force of 
public opinion, by commonwealth statutes, and by 
personal responsibility. These orders are often 
called an " incorporation " of the towns by the 
general court. The word can hardly be defended. 
All these privileges belonged to the towns already ; 
and the orders of October 10, 1639, are much more 
like the first ten amendments to the Constitution 
of the United States, a Bill of Rights, originating 
in the jealousy of the political units. Indeed, 
there is hardly a step in the proceedings in Con- 
necticut in 1639 which does not tempt one to di- 
gress into the evident parallels in the action on the 
national stage one hundred and fifty years later. 
Like causes produced curiously similar effects. 

Each town was to choose annually, by vote of 
the freemen, four persons as deputies to the gen- 
eral court, unless the number of towns should in- 
crease so as to make a reduction necessary. Each 
year there was to be a court of election on the 
second Thursday of April (afterwards changed to 
May), to choose a governor and six magistrates. 
The choice of magistrates was limited to those 
nominated at some preceding session of the court, 
each town making not more than two nominations, 
and the general court adding as many as it chose. 
At the court of election, the freemen brought in 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 77 

paper ballots stating their choice for governor for 
the following year, a plurality vote electing. It 
seems to have been the intention to make this 
election a pure democracy, in which each voter 
gave in his ballot in person. As population spread 
further from Hartford, the custom of sending bal- 
lots by proxies must have grown up ; for the court 
order of 1660, which proposed a change in the 
governor's term of office, suggested to the " remote 
Plantations, that use to send Proxies at the elec- 
tion, by their Deputies," that they should vote on 
their ballots for or against the proposed repeal. 
After 1670, the regulations adopted by the assem- 
bly, to govern the manner of taking these proxies, 
amounted practically to election laws, to be en- 
forced by the town selectmen. The governor was 
to be a church-member, and originally no one was 
to be chosen to the office two years in succession. 
In 1660, the general court, desiring to retain John 
Winthrop, Jr., as governor, proposed to the free- 
men to abolish the restriction of reelection, and 
the freemen did so. 

The six magistrates were the germ of the fu- 
ture senate of the commonwealth, but at first they 
can hardly be considered a separate chamber. 
Their " magestraticall powers " were quite unde- 
fined, and, until the charter, may be taken to 
cover not only judicial functions, but such duties 
as the general court saw fit to add thereto from 
time to time. In general, they were district 



78 CONNECTICUT. 

judges, meeting from time to time in bank, with 
legislative powers when joined by the governor 
and deputies. At the court of election, the sec- 
retary for the time being read the nominations 
for the office of magistrate in the order in which 
they had been given him. As each was read, the 
freemen handed in either blank ballots counting 
against the candidate, or ballots containing his 
name and counting for him. The balloting con- 
tinued until six names had obtained a majority of 
the votes cast. If six magistrates were not thus 
obtained, the number was filled up by taking those 
names which had received the largest number of 
votes in their favor. 

On the second Thursday of September, the gov- 
ernor, magistrates, and deputies were to meet as 
a general court, " for makeing of lawes," other- 
wise expressed by the phrase " to agitate the af- 
faires of the commonwealth." This body was to 
pass laws of general interest, to dispose of unap- 
propriated lands, to act as a court of last resort, 
to decide on the amount of taxation, and to appor- 
tion it among the towns on the report of an ap- 
portionment committee on which each town was 
to be equally represented. 

In the little town republics, the ancient and 
honorable office of constable was the connecting 
link between commonwealth and town. The con- 
stable published the commonwealth laws to his 
town, kept the " publike peace " of the town and 



TEE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 79 

commonwealth, levied the town's share of the 
commonwealth taxation, and went " from howse 
to howse " to notify the freemen of meetings of 
the general court, and of the time and place of 
elections of deputies thereto. " The parish," says 
Selden, " makes the constable ; and, when the 
constable is made, he governs the parish." He 
might even become the instrument of a legal rev- 
olution, in case the governor and magistrates re- 
fused to call the regular meetings of the general 
court, or, on petition of the freemen, a special 
meeting. In that case, the constitution provided 
that the freemen were to instruct the constables 
to order elections of deputies, who were to consti- 
tute a general court themselves, excluding the 
governor and magistrates. This power never was 
exercised, but it is an extraordinary feature in 
constitutional law. It was the Connecticut mode 
of ensuring recognition of the direct representa- 
tives of the towns. 

This constitution was the first conscious and 
deliberate attempt to found a commonwealth de- 
mocracy on this continent, and it lasted in reality 
until 1818, for the charter changed it in no essen- 
tial point. It was a system of complete popular 
control, of frequent elections by the people, and 
of minute local government. It remained, through- 
out confiscations, modifications, and refusals of 
charters in other colonies, the exemplar of the 
rights of self-government which all the English 



80 CONNECTICUT. 

colonies gradually caine to aim at more or less 
consciously. In later times the length of ser- 
vice of its officers was again and again cited by 
Jefferson to prove that, in a real democracy, an- 
nual elections were no bar to prolonged tenure 
of office. The first election of officers under the 
constitution was held April 11, 1639. John 
Haynes was chosen governor. Six magistrates 
were elected. One of the magistrates, Roger Lud- 
low, was chosen deputy governor ; another, Ed- 
ward Hopkins, secretary ; and another, Thomas 
Wells, treasurer ; and these and twelve deputies, 
or " committees," made up the general court. 
Until 1660, it was a tolerably steady rule that the 
governor of one year was the deputy governor of 
the next, and vice versa. In this period of about 
twenty years Haynes was governor eight times, 
and deputy governor five times ; and Hopkins was 
governor seven times, and deputy governor six 
times. In 1657 John Winthrop began his term 
of service as governor, which lasted, through the 
removal of the provision against reelection, for 
eighteen years, the longest term of service reached 
by any of Connecticut's chief magistrates. In the 
next century, Gurdon Saltonstall held the office 
for seventeen years, 1707-24, Nathan Gold hold- 
ing the office of deputy governor during all but 
the first year of Saltonstall's term. Saltonstall 
was followed by Joseph Talcott, who also held 
the office of governor for seventeen years, 1724- 



THE CONNECTICUT COLONY. 81 

41 ; having the same deputy governor, Jonathan 
Law, throughout his entire term. Law succeeded 
Talcott ; and thereafter, until 1818, the rule was 
that a governor held office until he died or refused 
to serve longer, when the deputy governor took 
his place for a like term. Jonathan Trumbull, 
senior, was governor, 1769-84 ; and his son, of 
the same name, held the office 1798-1809. 

Reelection to other offices was never prohibited, 
and long terms of service in them have been al- 
most too numerous for special mention. John Al- 
lyn, for example, became secretary in 1664 and 
held the office for twenty-eight years, influencing 
the policy of the colony strongly during the whole 
period. A more remarkable case is that of the 
Whitings, who held the office of treasurer for 
seventy years, — Joseph Whiting 1679-1718, and 
his son and successor, John Whiting, 1718-49. 
Even this family record was outdone by the 
Wyllyses in the office of secretary. Hezekiah 
Wyllys held the office 1712-35 ; his son and suc- 
cessor, George Wyllys, 1735-96 ; and Samuel 
Wyllys, George's son and successor, 1796-1810, 
the office having remained in the family but two 
years short of a century. Length of tenure was 
the rule in local offices as well. In the first two 
hundred and fifty years of its history, Hartford 
has had but twenty town clerks. One of them, 
John Allyn, held the office, by annual elections, 
for thirty-seven years, and another, George Wyllys, 



82 CONNECTICUT. 

for fifty years. Cases of this kind were exceed- 
ingly common throughout the commonwealth. 
William Hillhouse, of New London, served in the 
general court for fifty-eight years, so that, as elec- 
tions to the lower house of that body were semi- 
annual, he was sent by his town to one hundred 
and sixteen successive sessions. 

It must be admitted that much of this perma- 
nency in democracy was due to the nature of the 
people ; but a large share ought to be credited to 
their institutions. The people, fully satisfied with 
the complete control over the government which 
their constitution had secured to them, were con- 
tent to allow circumstances to develop the men 
best suited to government. At the same time, 
the intense personal interest felt by every citizen 
in the commonwealth gave all of them a common 
motive, sharpened their intelligence, united their 
force, and carried the commonwealth safely 
through storms which would otherwise have been 
fatal. So much, at least, Connecticut owes to the 
constitution of 1639. 



CHAPTER VII. 
THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 

The settlements of New Haven, Milford, and 
Guilford probably had their origin in closely con- 
nected movements at home, though they took 
place at different times. Every indication to be 
j drawn from the records shows common character- 
i is tics of persons, methods, beliefs, and purposes. 

The two most prominent men in the New Haven 
I party of settlers were John Davenport (otherwise 
i Damport or Dampard) and Theophilus Eaton, 
I both Londoners, at least by adoption. Davenport 
\ was a Coventry man, an Oxford student, curate 
of St. Lawrence Jewry, and vicar of St. Stephen's, 
i Coleman Street, London. His inclinations seem 
I to have been at first those of a moderately Low 
I Church man, in the modern sense ; but Laud's 
i persecutions had converted him into a " danger- 
j ous " Puritan by 1633, when he resigned and went 
i to Holland. His acquaintance among Londoners 
of the middle class and of his own way of think- 
ing was extensive ; and it was from this class that 
the material strength of the New Haven settle- 
ment was drawn. Its leading representative was 



84 CONNECTICUT. 

Theophilus Eaton, an Oxfordshire man by birth, 
and a London merchant of sufficient prominence 
to have served in some semi-diplomatic capacity at 
the Danish court. In some way now unknown, the 
tentacles of the movement had run out into York- 
shire, Hertfordshire, and Kent ; and these counties 
furnished the bulk of the purely agricultural pop- 
ulation. The Hertfordshire families seem to have 
tended to Milford, and the men of Kent to Guil- 
ford, while the Yorkshiremen found New Haven 
most congenial. 

The first or New Haven party of settlers, mainly 
Londoners, with Davenport and Eaton as leaders, 
landed at Boston, July 26, 1637. The wealth, 
influence, and coherence of the party made it a 
desirable acquisition, and the Bay colony made 
every effort to settle it within the jurisdiction. 
Many reasons combined to make the efforts fruit- 
less. Theological disputes, notably the Hutchin- 
son controversy, had harassed Massachusetts ; and 
there was no great promise, to the critical eyes of 
the new-comers, of healing them. The peculiar- 
ity of Massachusetts, as distinguished from Con- 
necticut, was the supremacy of the commonwealth 
over the towns, of church - members over non- 
church-members, and of influential classes over 
the church-members. This constitution of affairs 
was not so objectionable to the Davenport and 
Eaton party, for they followed it closely in their 
own colony, as the fact that in Massachusetts 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 85 

they would form only one or two towns, and 
would be under the control of the commonwealth, 
whereas they desired to be the commonwealth and 
control the subordinate civil divisions. They had 
no desire to assume the place of the common- 
wealth's opposition, from which the Connecticut 
settlers had just escaped. Again, they came to 
Boston at a time when the newly opened Connec- 
ticut territory was a common topic of conversa- 
tion ; and a " fine opening " has always been an 
almost irresistible temptation to the race. Fi- 
nally, the chase of the Pequots along the Connec- 
ticut coast toward New Nether land had taken 
place within a month of their arrival ; and who 
could pass through the southern borders of Con- 
necticut in June without sounding their praises to 
his friends at Hartford and the Bay ? The new- 
comers seem to have decided very quickly that 
they would not remain in Massachusetts ; that 
they would go to the new territory ; and that 
their settlement should be placed somewhere on 
the coast. 

In the autumn of 1637, Eaton, with some of his 
party, explored the northern shore of Long Island 
Sound, and pitched on Quinnipiack, an Indian 
district having a good harbor, as the best seat for 
a colony. A hut was built, and a few men were 
left to try the winter climate by personal experi- 
ence. The rest of the party remained in various 
Massachusetts towns, and even increased their 



86 CONNECTICUT. 

numbers by accessions from their neighbors. The 
venture had a commercial as well as a politico- 
religious aspect. Each of the " free planters" 
had invested stocks, varying from Eaton's £3,000 
down to the ordinary £10 share. Some of these 
" free planters " never came to New Haven or 
New England, investing money only ; and, on the 
other hand, some Massachusetts men entered their 
names, and even promised their personal presence 
to the venture. 

The company set sail from Boston March 30, 
1(338. Quinnipiack was reached in about a fort- 
night; and the memorable first sermon was 
preached by Davenport, April 18, under an oak- 
tree, probably from Matt. iv. 1 : " Then was Jesus 
led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be 
tempted of the Devil." It is a pity that no note 
of the discourse has been preserved, for the obvious 
application of the text to the situation of the hear- 
ers, the constant temptation to consider every un- 
pleasant incident, or even the consequences of their 
own errors, as the intervention of their personal 
enemy and antagonist, the Devil, would go very 
far to explain or palliate many otherwise inex- 
plicable events in their history. 

Such incidents were not slow in coming. The 
season was so bad that the crops failed and had to 
be replanted ; and a violent earthquake, June 1, 
seemed sent to daunt their spirits and drive them 
out of the territory into which they had intruded. 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 87 

If any of these things moved them, it was probably- 
only to a more stubborn resolution against Satanic 
power and Indian powowings. Their determina- 
tion to stand their ground was not relaxed. On 
the contrary, and as if to deal fairly even with 
their spiritual enemies, they went on to complete 
their title to the soil by purchase from the Indians. 
On November 24 and December 11, 1638, Daven- 
port, Eaton, " and others " bought the title from 
Momaugin and Montowese respectively, with their 
subordinate chiefs. Subsequent neighboring pur- 
chases made up, roughly speaking, the present 
county of New Haven, excluding the narrow strip 
on its northern border. For all this the price paid 
was one dozen each of coats, spoons, hatchets, hoes 
and porringers, two dozen knives, and four cases of 
French knives and " sizers " to one, and a dozen 
coats to the other, with a vague promise to both of 
protection against their enemies, and a reservation 
of the Indian right to hunt and fish on the ceded 
territory. Some may think that this was driving 
a sharp bargain with the adversary; but, all things 
considered, it must be admitted that the Indians 
received all that the territory was worth to them. 
The colony purchases did not stop here : pur- 
chase was the colony's consistent policy. The In- 
dian district of Wapoweage (subsequently Milford) 
was bought February 12, 1638 (9) ; Menunkatuck 
(Guilford), September 29, 1639 ; Rippo warns 
(Stamford), in July, 1640 ; and Yennicock (South- 



88 CONNECTICUT. 

old, L. L), some time in 1640. These four plan- 
tations, subsequently developed into towns, with 
Branford, made up mainly of the purchase of IV- 
cember 11, 1638, and the parent settlement of New 
Haven, finally constituted the New Haven com- 
monwealth. 

Now parties entered the colony from England 
throughout the autumn and winter of 1638-39, so 
that there were three ministers present — Daven- 
port, Rev. Henrv Whitefield, and Rev. Peter Trod- 
den, with congregations mere or Less organized j 
and another, Rev. Samuel Eaton, a brother of 
Theophilus, who seems to have had no following. 
Homogeneous as this settlement was. there were 
evidently interests which would impel segregation, 
and it was decided that the Whitefield party 
should take Guilford, the Prudden party Milford, 
and Samuel Eaton Branford, if he could obtain 
settlers. The latter enterprise was a failure, and 
Eaton was a resident of New Haven for four years 
after 1640, then returning to England and dying 
there in 1664. The Milford and Guilford ventures 
were successful during the summer ; and they 
were from the beginning so definite in organiza- 
tion that, though they were in New Haven in June, 
and afterwards followed the ecclesiastical and 
civil constitution then adopted, they did not in- 
trude upon the proceedings which led to it. 

More is known of the early topography and 
appearance of New Haven than of Hartford. 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 89 

Atwater and Lambert give maps of early New 
Haven and Milford. The houses of the early 
leaders, at least, are pretty accurately described, 
and something is known of their interiors. Con- 
temporaries were struck with the unaccustomed 
luxury of the New Haven houses. Some of them 
had tapestry hangings ; and Governor Eaton's had 
Turkey carpets, tapestry carpets and rugs. It is 
certain, at any rate, that the colony was spared 
many of the privations incident to most of the 
New England settlements ; and that, until the 
unhappy issue of the Delaware Bay settlement, 
which brought poverty into the colony, its affairs 
were unusually prosperous. 

Soon after their arrival at Quinnipiack, the 
Davenport and Eaton party had framed what was 
called a " plantation covenant." Nothing is known 
of its terms, except that it was short and simple, 
merely engaging that the Scriptures should govern 
their proceedings not only in the gathering and 
ordering of the church, but in the choice of magis- 
trates and other officers, the making and repeal of 
laws, the allotment of inheritances, and all other 
civil affairs. This, to be sure, furnished the lines 
on which the future constitution was to be con- 
structed. It had, also, peculiar effects which de- 
serve notice, though they may not be apparent on 
the surface. It practically abolished the excres- 
cences, such as entails and primogeniture, which 
had grown up on the English common law ; it 



90 CONNECTICUT. 

was almost, if not quite, a declaration of indepen- 
dence : and it made it certain that nothing short 
of direct and overmastering force could make the 
commonwealth anything but a republic. But it 
was yet without form or consistence ; and in spite 
of its Scripture provisions, the real work of consti- 
tution-making by the settlers did not begin until 

" They in Newman's barn laid down 
Scripture foundations for the town." 

The planters met June 4, 1639, in a large barn 
belonging to Mr. Robert Newman, to settle a con- 
stitution. Rev. Mr. Davenport opened the matter 
by preaching from Prov. ix. 1 : " Wisdom hath 
builded her house ; she hath hewn out her seven 
pillars." The application of the text to the busi- 
ness in hand was that, in a wise ordering of church 
or state, it was essential to rest on seven approved 
brethren, to whom the others were to be added. 
It is not difficult to see, on a general survey of the 
whole proceeding, what was the underlying pur- 
port of this proposition ; for, if the constitution of 
Connecticut looked of necessity to a government 
by the many, that of New Haven had as strong a 
disposition to secure government by the chosen 
few. 

After the service, Mr. Davenport submitted six 
" foundamentall orders " to the planters before 
him ; and as eacn was adopted by a show of 
hands, the whole became the constitution of New 
Haven. The orders were as follows : — 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 91 

1. That the Scriptures hold forth a perfect rule 
for men in their family, church and commonwealth 
affairs. 

2. That the rules of Scripture were to govern 
the gathering and ordering of the church, the 
choice of magistrates and officers, the making and 
repeal of laws, the dividing of allotments of inher- 
itance, and all things of like nature. 

3. That all " free planters " were to become such 
with the resolution and intention to be admitted 
into church fellowship as soon as God should fit 
them thereunto. 

4. That civil order was to be such as should con- 
duce to securing the purity and peace of the ordi- 
nances to the free planters and their posterity. 

5. That church-members only were to be " free 
burgesses," and were to choose from their own 
number magistrates and officers to make laws, di- 
vide inheritances, decide cases at law, and transact 
all public business. This alone seems to have met 
opposition. It called upon those free planters who 
were not church-members to surrender political as 
well as ecclesiastical power into the hands of the 
comparative minority who were church-members, 
and to make the surrender permanent and funda- 
mental. One man, probably Rev. Samuel Eaton, 
agreed to the general principle that voters and 
magistrates should be men fearing God, and that 
the church was the likeliest place to find such ; 
" only at this lie stuck, that free planters ought 



92 CONNECTICUT. 

not to give this power out of their hands." The 
vote left the objector in a minority of one. The 
number thus disfranchised in New Haven was 
probably a majority ; in Guilford, nearly half ; in 
Milford, but ten out of forty-four, and six of these 
were admitted within a year or two. 

6. That the free burgesses, or church -members, 
were to choose twelve of their number, and that 
these twelve were to choose the " seven pillars " 
to begin the church. The twelve selected were 
Eaton, Davenport, Robert Newman, Matthew Gil- 
bert, Richard Malbon, Nathaniel Turner, Ezekiel 
Cheevers, Thomas Fugill, John Ponderson, Wil- 
liam Andrews and Jeremiah Dixon, all noted 
names in earl} 7 New Haven history. The names 
given number but eleven. The reason for the de- 
ficiency is unknown. It may perhaps be found in 
a note on the record that one of the twelve was 
accused of extortion, confessed it with grief, and 
made restitution. His name may have been left 
out and never supplied. 

A provision was added to the " foundamentalls" 
that no one be admitted as a free planter until he 
had signed them. This was to make the peculiar- 
ities of the constitution permanent. 

Eaton, Davenport, Newman, Gilbert, Fugill, 
Ponderson and Dixon were chosen as the " seven 
pillars." These then entered into covenant with 
one another (August 22), this step constituting 
the church, and proceeded to gather the other 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 93 

brethren to them and it. They were thus a church 
before they were a civil government, and the or- 
ganized church organized the government. On the 
same day the church at Milford was gathered in 
the same way. 

The seven pillars met for the first time as a 
general court October 16, 1639. They elected 
Eaton " magistrate : " he was not called governor 
until the full development of the commonwealth 
in 1643. Newman, Gilbert, Turner and Fugill 
were chosen deputy magistrates, and Fugill secre- 
tary and notary public. It was agreed that future 
elections should be held in the last week of Octo- 
ber yearly, and that the word of God should be 
the only rule for the guidance of judges and public 
officers. Popular control, carefully limited as to 
the general court, was as nearly as possible ex- 
cluded from the periodical meetings of the magis- 
trates' court held by Eaton and his four deputies. 
Even after 1643, when it became the Particular 
Court of New Haven, it was rather a court of both 
civil and criminal equity than anything else. 

The republic of New Haven, thus constituted, 
had very little official communication with depend- 
ent or associated towns for some four years. Mil- 
ford with forty-four free planters, and Guilford 
with forty, were settled in 1639, in November and 
August respectively, under governments carefully 
modelled on that of New Haven. Most of the 
Milford settlers were dissatisfied Wethersfield 



94 CONNECTICUT. 

people, who had left the Connecticut jurisdiction 
to reach just such a social and ecclesiastical system 
as that of New Haven ; while the Guilford people 
were absolutely in sympathy with Davenport even 
before their departure from England. Each had 
its church, gathered to its seven pillars, who also 
acted as a legislature and court, and held the town 
lands in trust for the town. The separate life of 
New Haven may therefore stand as a fair repre- 
sentative of the others. 

The lands belonging to the towns seem to have 
been distributed by common agreement or by lot, 
and with entire impartiality. The minister was 
given a first choice ; and it was very natural that 
a man so distinguished among his fellows as Eaton 
was honored with a choice next after the minister. 
The leading military man, Captain Turner, and 
the deacons, were given a similar privilege, so that 
they might choose places convenient for the ful- 
fillment of their duties. Thereafter the division 
bears a curious resemblance to the distribution of 
lands under the village community system. The 
limited area which was meant to be the real town 
was divided into home lots, and the outlying lands 
of the township, as distinguished from the town, 
were divided into corresponding plots of arable 
and meadow lands. Home lots and outlying plots 
were of different sizes, corresponding to the vari- 
ous known gradations of contribution to the com- 
mon stock. In each grade of contribution, the 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 95 

contributors received share and share alike, though 
the higher grades of contributors had to be first 
satisfied. But " grades of contribution " did not 
depend simply on money values. In the distribu- 
tion of January, 1640, each settler received five 
acres of upland and meadow for each hundred 
pounds of his estate, and for each head in his 
family two and a half acres of upland and half an 
acre of meadow ; " and in the necke an acre to 
every hundred pound, and half an acre to every 
head." In the distribution of September, 1640, 
twenty acres of out-land were assigned to every 
" hundred pounds of estate given in," and two and 
a half acres for " every head ; " and it was decided 
that each of the small lots in the town should have 
four acres of planting ground to each lot, and one 
acre to every head. As a restriction on the eager- 
ness for acquisition, taxes were imposed from the 
beginning, — fourpence an acre per annum for up- 
land and meadow, and twopence for second-division 
lands. Finally, no sales to outsiders were to be 
made without the approval of the general court ; 
and common lands, including clay-pits, were re- 
served to the commonwealth. 

These " common lands " were held under much 
the same conditions in the New Haven and Con- 
necticut towns as in those of Massachusetts, though 
the materials for study are not so abundant. 
There was no hasty scramble from ship to shore, 
no location wherever choice and opportunity might 



96 CONNECTICUT. 

lead a family to settle without interfering with 
prior rights. On the contrary, every step was or- 
dered and directed by the voice of the town, ex- 
pressed in that assembly which has always been 
the mainspring of the New England system. The 
voice of the town either chose each man's location 
for him, or fixed the principles on which it was to 
be chosen. Here the parallel with any form of 
the village community must stop, for the New 
England settlers had come from England thor- 
oughly imbued with the idea of individual prop- 
erty in land; and the land, when once allotted, 
became purely individual property, subject to 
alienation or devise, without return to the com- 
mon stock. But there was necessarily a certain 
amount of land, larger or smaller, which was not 
needed for immediate allotment ; and the rules of 
the community were pretty rigidly applied to this. 
It was the property of all, and was at first regu- 
lated by the town authorities. In New Haven, 
January 16, 1642 (3), it was decided that the 
common land known as " The Neck " should be a 
" stinted common " for cattle, and should be 
fenced and fitted with gates. The owner of 
twelve acres could put in a horse, of six acres an 
ox, of three acres a two-year-old steer, and of 
two acres a calf. As allotments had not depended 
on wealth alone, but on " heads " as well, this gave 
every man a share in the common. So a Norwalk 
town meeting of May 30, 1655, voted that " all 



TEE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 97 

dry cattle, excepting two year old heifers, shall 
be herded together on the other side of the Nor- 
walk river, and there kept by the owners of the 
cattle ; every man keeping according to his pro- 
portion of the cattle there herded." And all the 
town records of early years contain provisions al- 
lowing the inhabitants to fell timber in the town 
" commonage " at particular seasons, or to carry 
away windfalls. 

As long as the town commonage was large and 
comparatively valueless, its affairs were managed 
by the town meeting. As its area became smaller 
and more valuable, and as new-comers crowded into 
the town, the management fell into the hands of 
an association of proprietors, composed of descend- 
ants of the original settlers, and interminable law- 
suits often varied the monotony of the management. 
All through the eighteenth century, the efforts of 
the " new-comers " to get a share of the common 
lands made up a large part of local politics ; and, 
during the Revolution period, the same question 
underlies much of the difference between " Sons 
of Liberty " and " Tories." Finally, the com- 
monage being reduced by sales to a minimum of 
land poor enough to bankrupt any corporation 
which should undertake to manage it in earnest, 
the association of proprietors dies out and disap- 
pears, or becomes an hereditary social organiza- 
tion. 

A pronounced distinction between New Haven 



98 CONNECTICUT. . 

and Connecticut was the inquisitorial character 
assumed by the former from the beginning of its 
existence. It is true that much of what appears 
to be inquisitorial proceeding was due to the pe- 
culiar theory which governed the constitution of 
the legislative bodies of New England : the legis- 
latures were also courts, and their proceedings 
were interspersed with a vast number of cases 
which would now be thought beneath the atten- 
tion of a commonwealth government, — cases of 
lewdness, drunkenness in servants, impertinence, 
promiscuous kissing, etc. But the difference, 
which is plainly perceptible from any reading of 
the respective records, is that such matters were 
rather matters of business with the Connecticut 
authorities, to be dealt with and got rid of as rap- 
idly as justice would permit; while to the New 
Haven magistracy they were matters of deep and 
serious import, to be probed to the bottom with 
scientific accuracy in every moral and psychologi- 
cal detail. Every New Haven sentence bristles 
at least with implications of the moral law. 
" Never elsewhere, I believe," says Dr. Bacon, 
" has the world seen magistrates who felt more 
deeply that they were God's ministers executing 
God's justice." All this may be admitted with- 
out impairing the belief that this attempted per- 
sonification of Divine justice had its drawbacks. 
It would be unjust to say, as is generally assumed, 
that it resulted in Draconic severity of punish- 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 99 

mcnt : New Haven punishments, as a rule, were 
not at all severe. It would be unfaithful not to 
say that it resulted in a meddlesomeness which 
must have done more moral harm than good, and 
in the end did much to overthrow the government 
itself. " Goodman Hunt and his wife, for keep- 
ing the councils of the said William Harding, bak- 
ing him a pasty and plum-cakes, and keeping com- 
pany with him on the Lord's day, and she suffer- 
ing Harding to kiss her," were ordered to be sent 
out of town " within one month after the date 
hereof [March 1, 1643], yea, in a shorter time if 
any miscarriage be found in them." While the 
New Haven magistracy was sitting in solemn la- 
bor to bring forth such a mouse as this, its Con- 
necticut rival was actively engaged in real com- 
monwealth business, every step of which made its 
ultimate supremacy more assured. 

The peculiar cast of mind of the New Haven 
magistracy has done injustice to the good name of 
the early town. Its records of trials contain a 
mass of filth from which the Connecticut records 
are comparatively free. Some think that the 
missing records, covering the years 1649-53, were 
even worse, and were destroyed by the authorities 
to protect the town's reputation. But the trials 
which remain really speak highly for the morals 
of the town. The amount of real undeanness 
brought to light is singularly small; the "evi- 
dence " on which other convictions were based 

• L.cFC. 



1 00 CONNECTICUT. 

would not be even admitted in a modern court of 
law ; and the whole makes up a record rather of 
the diseased suspicious of the magistrates than 
of the criminality of their people. Most of the 
"criminals" better deserved a medical than a 
Cl magistratical " examination ; and their cases are 
merely a demonstration of the necessity of the 
recognized rules of evidence, not of the immo- 
rality of the early Puritans, as dissenting author- 
ities are so fond of representing them. 

Sumptuary laws were attempted in New Haven, 
as in Connecticut, and with as little success in one 
as in the other. Codes were drawn up to regulate 
prices of labor and materials, but they were prob- 
ably meant mainly to regulate the rates at which 
taxes should be paid to the commonwealth in 
kind, in materials or labor. So far as they were 
meant to regulate individual contracts, they were 
evidently a failure, and they were soon repealed. 
Rules against excess in drinking and in apparel 
were also attempted, with the usual want of suc- 
cess ; and in their failure, as in the matter of 
"watching and warding," there are indications 
that kissing is not the only thing that goes by 
favor. John Jenner, accused, February 5, 1639 
(40), of being drunk with strong waters, was ac- 
quitted, " itt appearing to be of inflrmyty and 
occasioned by the extremyty of the colde." 

It needed but a few years for the little settle- 
ment to show its consciousness of independent ex- 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 101 

istence. As soon as the establishment of houses 
and streets had given it a corporate appearance 
and feeling, its name was changed, September 1, 
1640, to New Haven (commonly then Newhaven). 
Another step, though abortive, shows the spirit of 
the people. It was ordered, December 25, 1641, 
" that a free school shall be set up in this town." 
Davenport was to ascertain the amount of money 
which would be needed for it, and to draw up rules 
for the institution. Contemporary expressions go 
to show that the intent was not to establish a mere 
school, in the modern sense of the word, but to lay 
a foundation which could develop easily into some 
such institution as the powerful university with 
which New Haven's name is now so closely linked. 
It should not be forgotten that, at least in spirit, 
the establishment of Harvard by the common- 
wealth of Massachusetts Bay had a contemporary 
rival in the straggling little settlement on the 
shores of Long Island Sound. But for the differ- 
ent circumstances of the two peoples, and a defer- 
ence to Harvard's appeals for support, their two 
universities would have been born almost together, 
and the two hundred and fiftieth anniversaries of 
Harvard and Yale would have been almost coinci- 
dent. 

When the separate existence of New Haven had 
lasted some five years, her government developed 
into a confederation. Many reasons might be 
assigned for such a result. The towns which 



102 CONNECTICUT. 

had been founded on the New Haven purchases 
had been separated from the parent stem long 
enough to make Mr. Davenport's opinion some- 
thing less than all-sufficient, and to develop a 
higher regard for the opinion of their own minis- 
ters ; for there was a strong ecclesiastical tap-root 
to town independence, even under the New Haven 
system. Again, it may well be imagined that 
men like Goodyear and Leete had not been blind 
to the growth and possibilities of the Connecticut 
colony. New Haven claimed only what she had 
bought : Connecticut claimed every square foot on 
which a Pequot had ever collected tribute. If 
New Haven was to maintain her solidarity against 
her rival's indefinite and penetrating claims, it 
must be by turning a nominal hegemony into a 
real commonwealth. Closely connected with this 
point was the proposed New England Union. If 
New Haven were left out of it, she was practically 
subordinated to her rival in the new territory. If 
she was to present her claim to admission, it must 
be with all the prestige derivable from a cluster 
of allied, not dependent, towns. It is significant, 
perhaps, that the first suggestion of the change 
comes in the appointment, April 6, 1643, of com- 
missioners to the New England Union "for the 
jurisdiction of New Haven." It is quite probable 
that the leading men of the various towns had 
already agreed on the general form which the 
" jurisdiction " was to take, but it was not settled 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 103 

until October, owing to difficulties in the case of 
Milford. 

During Milford's four years of nominal depend- 
ence, but real independence, it had gone so far as 
to admit six men as " free burgesses," or voters, 
although they were not church-members. With 
the rise of the commonwealth proposition, the ad- 
mission of these six Milford burgesses became a 
great international question, which cost a whole 
summer of negotiation before it could be settled. 
It was finally agreed that the six should continue 
to vote in peace so long as they remained in Mil- 
ford, but that they should not hold office, and that 
Milford should never again scandalize the other 
towns by thus violating their common law. 

Harmony having thus been restored, a consti- 
tution for the commonwealth was agreed upon, 
October 27, 1643, by a general court, consisting 
of Governor Eaton, now first so called ; Deputy- 
governor Goodyear ; three magistrates ; and eight 
deputies, two each from New Haven, Milford, 
Guilford, and Stamford. The features of the new 
constitution were not essentially different from 
that of 1639. Free burgesses, or voters, were to 
be church-members only, except the six Milford 
anomalies. Only church-members were to hold 
office. The rights of " free planters," not church- 
members, were limited to " their inheritance and 
to commerce," Each town was to have its par- 
ticular court, elected by the burgesses, dealing 



104 CONNECTICUT. 

with causes of not more than £20, or, in criminal 
cases, involving no greater punishment than 
" stocking and whipping " or a fine of <£5, with 
right of appeal to the general court. In the 
election of governor and other commonwealth of- 
ficers, voters need not go to New Haven, but 
might vote by proxy. The general court, con- 
sisting of governor, deputy governor, magistrates 
and two deputies from each town, was to meet at 
New Haven twice a year, on the first Wednesday 
in April and the last Wednesday in October, the 
latter being the court of election. The magis- 
trates were to meet separately, as a court of mag- 
istrates, on the Monday preceding the stated gen- 
eral court meetings, to try weighty and capital 
cases or appeals from town courts, and to perform 
most of the functions of a grand jury. Ordinary 
trial by jury was not a part of the New Haven 
system. 

The general court was to provide for the main- 
tenance of the purity of religion, and " suppress the 
contrary ; " to make and repeal laws, and require 
the execution of them ; to call magistrates to ac- 
count for misdemeanors ; to impose upon the in- 
habitants an oath of fidelity and subjection to the 
laws ; to settle and levy taxes ; and to try causes 
on appeal from any of the other courts. Its pro- 
ceedings were to be in accordance with the Scrip- 
tures, and no law was to pass but by a vote of a 
majority of the magistrates and a majority of the 
deputies. 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 105 

At the next stated meeting in April, 1644, it 
was ordered that "the judicial laws of God, as 
they were delivered by Moses,"' should be consid- 
ered binding on all offenders, and should be a rule 
to all the courts of the jurisdiction, " till they be 
branched out into particulars hereafter." These 
are probably the provisions which have done most 
to develop the current notions of the criminal 
code of New Haven. They have very probably 
reflected upon the sister colony as well, and, since 
the provisions of the Connecticut criminal code 
were like those of New Haven, though without 
their expressed basis, both have helped to give 
currency to Mr. Peters's absurd code of " Blue 
Laws." A general reference to " the Mosaic code 
of New Haven " has usually been held sufficient 
rebutter to any attempt to argue against the Blue 
Law myth. Nor is the reason far to seek. It is 
not a violent assumption that the phrase, " the 
judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by 
Moses," has not, to the average reader or hearer 
of the present time, that clear-cut significance 
which it had to those who first used it, or which 
the death statutes of a modern state have to the 
criminal lawyer. It is true that the New Haven 
general statute, agreeing generally with those of 
Connecticut and Massachusetts, made some fifteen 
offenses capital crimes, — murder, treason, perjury 
aimed at life, kidnapping, bestiality, sodomy, 
adultery, incest, rape, blasphemy in its highest 



106 CONNECTICUT. 

form, idolatry, witchcraft, " presumptuous " Sab- 
bath-breaking, the third conviction for burglary 
committed on the Lord's day, and rebellion against 
parents. A formidable catalogue truly. But 
why is it the only one to be brought to the bar ? 
Mackintosh, speaking in the English House of 
Commons so late as March 2, 1819, said : " I hold 
in my hand a list of those offenses which at this 
moment are capital, in number two hundred and 
twenty-three" The New Haven and Connecticut 
colonists, by a single stroke of legislation more 
than a century and a half before, had reduced 
their list of capital offenses to fifteen. If such a 
reduction, with hardly an execution for any of 
them, be not considered a long step in the history 
of law reform, law reformers are hard to satisfy. 

The government established in 1643 continued 
without essential change until its final absorption 
by Connecticut. Two towns, however, were 
added to the four already, named. Southold, L. 
I., bought in 1640, was admitted as a town in 
1649. It was at first called by its Indian name, 
Yennicott or Yennicock ; and its English name, 
Southold or Southhold, perhaps signified the place 
of strength to the south of New Haven. It ex- 
tended some forty miles west of Orient Point. 
Totoket, or Branford, was a part of the second 
purchase of 1638. Samuel Eaton having failed 
to settle it, it was granted in 1640 to another dis- 
satisfied Wethersfield company, headed by Wil- 



THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. 107 

Ham Swayne, and Branford was admitted as a 
town in 1651. In 1644 it had been reinforced by- 
Rev. Abraham Pierson's church from Southamp- 
ton, L. I., which sought a more congenial home 
under the New Haven jurisdiction when its town 
joined Connecticut. But Pierson's church was 
not to escape thus. Within twenty years, the 
union was consummated, and the church again 
broke away from Connecticut and founded New- 
ark, N. J., a settlement which has given to New 
Jersey the mass of the Connecticut family names 
which have appeared in her history. Hunting- 
ton, L. I., also applied to be admitted in 1656 and 
1659, but was refused because of her demand that 
her local court should try all her civil cases and 
all criminal cases not capital. 

Six towns, therefore, — New Haven, Milford, 
Guilford, Stamford, Southold and Branford, — 
made up the New Haven jurisdiction during its 
short history. With the exception of Stamford 
and Southold, the commonwealth lay immediately 
around New Haven. Its smaller members are now 
villages which offer little that is striking to the 
traveler or visitor. Time was when they were 
members of an almost independent republic whose 
hopes were high, and whose history serves at 
least to show that the New England town system 
cannot thrive in an unfriendly soil. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT AND ITS FAILURE. 

The Saybrook colony was the offspring, in one 
sense, of the English king's committal to the 
policy of " thorough." There was in the king- 
dom, in addition to the comparatively helpless 
lower-class victims of Laud, an unknown number 
of gentlemen of good family who were thoroughly 
indoctrinated with Puritanism, or with kindred 
forms of dissent. These had as yet escaped serious 
persecution, partly through family and social influ- 
ences, partly through the English reserve which, by 
checking any too violent expressions of dissent, 
had enabled family and social influences to have 
their full effect. About 1634-35 there were strong 
indications that the period of peace for this class 
was approaching its limit. Wentworth, in Ireland, 
was constructing the covered way by which the 
liberties of England were to be assailed. The 
heart of all Protestant Europe was yet faint and 
sick at the hideous atrocities of Tilly's musketeers 
at the sack of Magdeburg : was any more mercy 
to be expected by English cities at the hands of 
Wentworth's Irish musketeers ? And who was 



THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT. 109 

to suppose that the supple body known as a parlia- 
ment under Elizabeth and James would take the 
law into its own hands against Charles ? Or that 
Puritanism would develop a soldiery before which 
the king's men would faint and fly ? Patient and 
reserved men forgot that other Englishmen were 
as reserved, as patient and as dangerous as they, 
and concluded that hope was gone from England, 
and that there was no refuge but across the At- 
lantic. 

It may be that the supposititious, or at least 
unverifiable grant to Warwick by the Council of 
Plymouth in 1630 was a pious fraud, designed to 
provide some such refuge, if the fear of confisca- 
tion of charter rights should deter Massachusetts 
from receiving refugees. The difficulty is to un- 
derstand why the declaration of a baseless claim 
by the Say and Sele patentees, in the country and 
during the life of the original owner, should not 
have been met by a prompt contradiction. This 
is the strongest secondary evidence of the validity 
of the grant to Warwick in 1630, and its transfer 
to the Say and Sele Company in 1631, — that in 
1634-35 the latter patentees made active and pub- 
lic preparations to enforce their claims to Con- 
necticut and to remove there themselves, without 
exciting any complaint or opposition on the part 
of the Plymouth Council or their later grantees. 
That broad excuse, "the confusion of the times,'* 



110 CONNECTICUT. 

may serve as a partial but hardly as an entirely 
satisfactory explanation. 

John Winthrop, Sen., the governor of Massachu- 
setts, had led the great Puritan migration to that 
colony in 1630. His son, John Winthrop, Jr., 
did not reach Boston until October, 1635. He was 
then a young man of twenty-nine, of good natural 
parts, well improved at Cambridge and Dublin 
and by travel on the continent, and he had already 
shown that philosophical, equable and judicial 
temperament which made him a trusted leader of 
men throughout his life. One of the bitterest 
critics of the early Massachusetts system hesitates 
before the beauties of the younger Winthrop's 
character, and calls him " perhaps the brightest 
ornament of New England Puritanism." His 
father's connection with the Say and Sele associates 
must have been close, and they must have seen 
in the son the qualities they needed. It thus hap- 
pened that the son, on his way to Boston, was di- 
verted into an interest in Connecticut, which 
finally made him more vitally important to that 
colony than the father had ever been to Massachu- 
setts. 

Articles of agreement were entered into July 
7, 1635, between John Winthrop, Jr., of the one 
part, and Viscount Say and Sele, Sir Arthur Has- 
selring, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Henry Lawrence, 
Henry Darley and George Fen wick of the other. 
Robert, Lord Brooke, did not sign, but was a party 



THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT. Ill 

in interest. Winthrop was to be fully compen- 
sated for his time and trouble, was to act as " gov- 
ernor of the river Connecticut in New England, 
and of the harbor and places adjoining," for one 
year, and was to build a fort at the mouth of the 
river, with a garrison of fifty men, reserving 1,000 
or 1,500 acres of good ground, near the fort, for its 
maintenance. His commission as governor was 
signed, sealed and delivered to him July 18. 

Winthrop arrived at Boston just a week before 
the first considerable migration to the Connecticut 
Valley. It is said that the intruding settlers made 
an agreement with him that, if the real owners, 
"their lordships," should require them to remove 
from their new settlements, they were to do so on 
receiving satisfaction for their improvements, or 
corresponding locations elsewhere. The agree- 
ment is referred to in the preamble to the Massa- 
chusetts commission to the provisional magistrates 
of Connecticut ; but it is curious that it does not 
seem to be referred to in the elaborate series of 
instructions to Winthrop, and letters to the king 
and various English noblemen in regard to the 
charter, although it would have materially strength- 
ened their case under the Fenwick purchase, as 
showing constructive permission from " their lord- 
ships " to settle, in default of notice to quit. Win- 
throp, to whom the instructions were addressed, 
was 'the very person who in 1635, as agent for 
the proprietors, had given them conditional per- 



112 CONNECTICUT. 

mission to settle in the Connecticut Valley ; and 
yet, in 1661, they allow themselves to appear to 
his majesty as originally sheer interlopers. In 
spite of the authority of the father's journal, the 
statement seems to lack some particulars essential 
to a clear understanding of it. 

The mouth of the river had already been seized 
by an English force, in order to keep it from 
the Dutch ; but the works constructed must have 
been of the most primitive character. A party 
of twenty men, sent by Winthrop, arrived at the 
fort and took possession November 24, 1635 ; and 
a little later came Winthrop himself and Lyon 
Gardiner, who soon became commander of the fort. 
For some years the garrison endured even more 
than the usual monotony of a frontier fort. Its 
men were ambushed and attacked during the Pe- 
quot struggle, but were restricted to a defensive 
warfare. Even settlement was really hindered by 
the fort. It drew danger, from Dutch or Indians, 
as the candle draws the moth ; and its direct 
protection was only efficient enough to keep its 
people within the fort, and in a few scattered 
buildings very near it. 

George Fen wick had visited the place the year 
of Winthrop's assumption of control. About mid- 
summer of the year 1689 he returned with much 
more parade. He had two vessels, which brought 
also his wife, Lady Alice Boteler, and his family. 
The name Saybrook was given to the settlement 



THE SAY BROOK ATTEMPT. 113 

in honor of the two leading proprietors, Lord Say 
and Lord Brooke ; but the contemporary genius 
for misspelling, resreted upon by the neighborhood 
of the river and the Sound, made it read Seabrook 
for many years upon the Connecticut records. 

The first minister was Rev. Thomas Peters, 
followed in 1646 bv Rev. James Fitch, who re- 
moved in 1660 to settle at Norwich with most of 
his church, there to become very much entangled 
with the affairs of the Indians and the manage- 
ment of their lands. Besides these, Captain John 
Mason, a renowned man of war and major general 
of the Connecticut colony's militia, and Thomas 
Leffingwell, were the leading men ; but there were 
many other Saybrook names which the Norwich 
migration transferred to that part of the common- 
wealth and subsequently far beyond its borders. 

The tract of land usually considered as under 
the jurisdiction of Saybrook was about ten miles 
in length, divided midway by the Connecticut 
River, and extending six or eight miles back from 
Long Island Sound. Small as this territory was, 
it was of great importance as controlling the only 
water exit from the Hartford region, and as the 
seat of the representative of the only paper title 
within the future commonwealth. The authori- 
ties of Connecticut showed their usual acuteness 
by forming close relations with Fenwick. He was 
admitted to the first conference which formed the 
New England union in 1643 ; and, as that con- 



114 CONNECTICUT. 

federation recognized only the four colonies of 
Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New 
Haven, Connecticut shrewdly ^appointed him as 
one of her commissioners in 1643 and 1644, with 
Edward Hopkins as the other. Fenwick was thus 
identified with Connecticut as closely as he could 
have been without an actual transfer of the rights 
which he represented. His second term of service 
as commissioner, in 1644, enabled him to render 
most important service to Connecticut in her 
boundary disputes with Massachusetts, which col- 
ony laid claim before the commissioners to the 
Pequot country. Fenwick interposed a protest 
against any decision which should in any way im- 
peach his principals' title to the territory in dis- 
pute, and the commissioners decided to postpone 
the decision until the patentees could be heard 
from. The delay served to enable Connecticut to 
secure a firmer hold on the conquered territory 
before a final decision became imperative. 

This diplomatic stroke had hardly been dealt 
when the Connecticut general court appointed a 
committee to treat with Fenwick for the sale of 
Saybrook. The logic of events had been too 
much for the Saybrook colony^ The state of 
things at home was no longer what it had been in 
1634. Whether Jenny Geddes ever threw her 
stool or not, a train of events had been started, 
bringing calamities to royalty and relief to the 
persecuted ; the once supple parliament had taught 



THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT. 115 

Wentworth the real meaning of u thorough ; " 
and, above all, Cromwell and his Ironsides had 
charged at Marston Moor. Puritan gentlemen in 
England had other things to think of than emi- 
grating to Saybrook ; and Fenwick was hopelessly 
isolated. Connecticut had the purpose and power 
of growth, but there was no longer hope for Say- 
brook. 

The agreement of sale was made December 5, 
1644. Fenwick made over the fort, its appurte- 
nances, and the land in the neighborhood to the 
colony of Connecticut. Lands n6t yet disposed of 
were to be distributed by a committee of five, of 
whom Fenwick was to be one. The rest of the 
Warwick patent, from Saybrook to Narragansett 
Bay, was to be brought by Fenwick " under the 
jurisdiction of Connecticut, if it came into his 
power." In return, Fenwick was to have the use 
of the buildings within the fort for ten years, with 
an impost on exports of corn, biscuit, beaver and 
cattle which should pass the fort during that time. 
As security to Fenwick, the general court ordered 
in the following February, in its ratification of 
the agreement, that every master of a vessel should 
land at the fort while passing it, and deliver to 
the commandant of the fort a note of the duti- 
able part of his cargo. In 1646 the amount was 
limited to £180 per annum, the total duty col- 
lected during the ten years being about <£ 1,600. 
The imposition of the duty nearly disrupted 



116 CONNECTICUT. 

the New England union. In 1647 Massachusetts 
filed a protest against it before the commission- 
ers of the union. She claimed that Connecticut 
had no right to levy on the Massachusetts towns 
of the upper Connecticut Valley a tax which 
was to inure to Connecticut's sole benefit in the 
acquisition of Saybrook. In 1649 the commis- 
sioners of the other three colonies decided against 
the protest of Massachusetts. Thereupon the 
Massachusetts commissioners exhibited an order 
of their general court, levying a tax on all goods 
of the other colonies imported into or exported 
from Boston, ostensibly for the repair of the cas- 
tle in the harbor. The suspiciously opportune 
circumstance of the castle's need of repairs just at 
this time excited considerable anger in the other 
colonies ; and this was intensified in 1653 by the 
refusal of Massachusetts to join the other colonies 
in a war against the Dutch and Indians. Perhaps 
the feeling in the latter case was the greater on 
account of the attitude assumed by Massachusetts, 
that of an advocate of peace and righteousness, 
averse to an offensive war ; whereas the fact, as 
it seemed to contemporary observers, was that the 
governing desire of the Bay colony was to con- 
vince the other colonies of their impotence, and of 
their folly in supporting the refusal of Connecti- 
cut to yield to Massachusetts even in the petty 
affair of the impost. With the expiration of Fen- 
wick's ten years' term the retaliatory measures 



THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT. 117 

were quietly allowed to disappear : probably the 
castle had been put into good repair by that 
time. 

With the conclusion of the agreement of 1644, 
Saybrook subsided into the position of a Connec- 
ticut township. Fenwick continued to reside at 
the fort, but took no prominent part in Connecti- 
cut affairs. The Connecticut general court re- 
quested him to return to England at his earliest 
convenience, and act as its agent in procuring 
that grant of the entire jurisdiction under the 
patent which he had promised to get " if it ever 
came within his power to do so." Lady Fenwick 
died at Saybrook about 1648, and her husband 
soon after returned to England, giving up the last 
vestige of the commercial city which was to have 
graced the mouth of the Connecticut. He died 
in 1657, before the colony applied for a charter. 

The Connecticut authorities were diligent in 
disseminating the idea, and were perhaps honest 
in their own belief, that Colonel Fen wick's sale 
had been a transfer of the patent and of the juris- 
diction thereunder, for this gave the colony a 
quasi-legal standing which it had not before. 
When Massachusetts, during the impost and boun- 
dary disputes, impugned the standing of Connec- 
ticut as a colony unauthorized and unwarranted 
by law, the latter colony always replied that it 
had a charter or patent in England, but that " the 
confusion of the times " prevented it from show- 



118 CONNECTICUT. 

ing anything more than a copy. It was when the 
confusion began to disappear, and the validity of 
the excuse with it, that the colony took steps to 
secure a charter from the king. In the instruc- 
tions to Governor Winthrop, the colonial authori- 
ties lay great stress on the Fen wick sale as in- 
volving the equitable transfer of the patent itself, 
although the terms of the agreement contradict 
them. They go so far as to say, " Had we not 
been too credulous and confident of the goodness 
and faithfulness of that gentleman [Fenwick], we 
might possibly have been at a better pass ; " and 
they direct the governor to take steps to recover 
from Fen wick's heirs the amount paid to him. 
They even sequestered the colonial estate of Mrs. 
Cullick, Fen wick's sister and his New England 
heir, until £500 were repaid and further claims 
were remitted. It would be far more than even- 
handed justice to the fathers of the Connecticut 
colony to admit that they were the simple victims 
of the wiles of George Fenwick : if he could so 
easily delude them, he was more successful than 
their other contemporaries. They seem to have 
understood perfectly in 1644 the wares for which 
they were then bargaining, and were quite aware 
that this part of the consideration was purely 
contingent. So impossible was it in 1661 for the 
contingency to be fulfilled that the letter of the 
colony to the king takes conspicuous care not to 
mention the Fenwick agreement at all. Perhaps 



THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT. 119 

its attitude toward the Fenwick family may best 
be explained as that of men who had bought a 
contingency, found it less valuable than they ex- 
pected, and were unwilling to confess their error 
even to one another. 

On the other hand, the romantic life and death 
of Lady Fenwick ought not to give to her hus- 
band's character that generous glamour which Con- 
necticut historians have been too prone to allow 
him. It should not be forgotten that he deliber- 
ately sold and appropriated the proceeds of prop- 
erty of which he was not the sole owner, only the 
agent. The colonial authorities yielded to his de- 
mand for XI, 600 for property which was not his, 
rather than see it sold to the Dutch ; and they 
paid the sum agreed upon. But the substantial 
iniquity of the transaction undoubtedly stirred 
them to a greater eagerness to make use of the 
invalidity of one feature of the agreement in order 
to secure substantial justice in others. On the 
whole, the merits of the case seem to be with the 
colony. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 

It is much to be regretted that the fathers of 
the Connecticut colony seem to have been too 
much immersed in the struggle for existence to 
give us any record of the appearance of men and 
things in these early years. In this respect, Con- 
necticut is unfortunate beyond any of her sister 
commonwealths. Hartford, the subsequent capi- 
tal of the colony and state, may be taken as an 
example. There does not seem to be any surviv- 
ing map, plan, picture, sketch or verbal descrip- 
tion of the town, or of any public or private build- 
ing, until about the time of the Revolution. Even 
the zeal of the antiquary finds " no thorough- 
fare " inscribed almost immediately on every clue 
which would have been a promising one in Massa- 
chusetts. The contemporary letters, journals, 
etc., seem to take existing things for granted. 
The minds of the writers were occupied almost 
exclusively with the actions of men ; and the 
pregnant incidental hints as to social features, 
manners and customs, topography, etc., which 
are so frequently furnished in other colonies by 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 121 

writers who had no notion that they were furnish- 
ing them, are not found in Connecticut. This was 
due to the peculiar nature of the early struggles 
in the colony. Difficulties of soil, commerce and 
general industry were no new matters with them : 
their wits were working mainly to know what 
other men might do or could do ; how Massachu- 
setts men would act about the boundary line ; how 
the Dutch would act about Long Island and the 
territory west of the Connecticut River ; how Eng- 
lishmen would settle their home government ; and 
what would be the influence on the fortunes of 
the little congeries of towns which, formed with- 
out a legal title, had never acquired one except 
from a man who never had it and did not profess 
to sell it. Determined as they were to maintain 
the integrity of their colonial existence, the im- 
pediments were enormous, and almost all of them 
lay in possible human action. It is no wonder, 
then, that the early official and unofficial records 
of Connecticut deal so largely with this one side 
of human history, and give us so little of any 
other. 

Antiquarian zeal has overcome some of these 
difficulties. The process of tracing back land ti- 
tles through the records of land transfers has given 
us an excellent map of Hartford in 1640, which, 
though partly conjectural, gives what is probably 
a very close representation of the town. It lies 
on the west bank of the Connecticut River, where 



122 CONNECTICUT. 

the river runs nearly due south. Running east- 
ward, through the southern central part of the 
town, is the "little river," or " riveret," a swift- 
flowing brook, whose depth varied with the sea- 
sons. The bulk of the town was thus to the north 
of the little river, and to the west of the Connecti- 
cut. Like the city of Washington, it was at first 
a city of magnificent distances. Its first settlers 
laid it out on a scale so generous that it was not 
necessary to enlarge the city limits until 1853, or 
to add more than one highway to the original 
roads during the century and a half between the 
settlement of Hartford and its incorporation as a 
city in 1784. Only one tenth of the township 
was included in the city limits of 1784 ; the city 
now covers the whole township, and its streets 
have increased from thirty to three hundred in 
number within the present century. 

At the mouth of the little river is the Dutch 
post Good Hope, still in the possession of its orig- 
inal owners in 1640, as Berwick-upon-Tweed long 
marked the remnant of the English claims in Scot- 
land. Alongside the main river was a strip of 
meadow land, and along the rising ground which 
bounded it on the west ran the highway from Bos- 
ton, which passed through the three river towns, 
and afterwards became the highway to the whole 
territory to the south. On the north bank of the 
little river, fronting a road along its edge, there 
were placed in succession the houses of Governor 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 123 

Haynes, of Rev. Mr. Hooker, of Rev. Mr. Stone, 
and of Elder Goodwin, " Meeting House Alley " 
separating Hooker and Stone. Meeting House 
Alley ran from the little river to a square (now 
State House Square), some distance in the rear 
of Stone and Goodwin, and nearly in the topo- 
graphical center of the town, which contained the 
market place, the jail, and the meeting house. 
The mass of the lots on this side of the town, ex- 
cept those fronting on the little river, lay east and 
west, perpendicular to the Boston highway and 
the parallel roads. The lots to the south of the 
little river lay mostly north and south, perpendic- 
ular to the highway along the little river and the 
parallel streets. Almost all the meadow land on 
this side of the little river, down to the Dutch 
settlement, was owned by Edward Hopkins,, the 
colony's leading merchant ; and to the southwest 
of his tract was the estate of the Wyllys family, 
on which was that which was to be the Charter 
Oak. Further up the little river were the tan- 
yard, located on an island ; and the mill, on the 
northern shore. Outside of the town were the 
cow pasture, the ox pasture, the landing, etc., and 
the roads were named according to the places to 
which they led. 

Few particulars are known of the size or appear- 
ance of the meeting house, or of any other build- 
ing. All the buildings were very certainly small, 
though the erection of a sawmill in 1667 is an in- 



124 CONNECTICUT. 

dication of an early improvement in house-build- 
ing. The windows were hardly more than open- 
ings for light and air ; and their size was reduced 
by the scarcity of glass, and the necessity of using 
oiled linen or other translucent material as a sub- 
stitute. The meeting house was too small to ad- 
mit of galleries, or of anything more than the mer- 
est suggestion of a pulpit. There was no plaster. 
Instead of pews there were plain and hard benches, 
and artificial heat was unknown, even in the bit- 
terest weather. Indeed, the Hartford church had 
no stoves until about 1815 ; and what Lodge calls 
" the ferocious practice " of baptizing newly born 
infants in church must have had an additional 
horror in the depth of winter. Finally an armed 
guard, suggestive of Indian neighbors, was an in- 
separable accompaniment to religious services, and 
was provided with seats near the door. In the 
other Connecticut towns, religious and other meet- 
ings were called by beat of drum, one of the in- 
habitants making an annual contract for the ser- 
vice. Hartford alone had a bell, brought from 
Cambridge, which was probably at that time the 
only church or public bell on the continent, with 
the exception of the one at Jamestown, Va. Its 
contents now make part of the bell, recast in 
1850, belonging to the First Congregational Church 
of Hartford. New Haven had no church bell until 
1681. 

One of the most difficult and delicate functions 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION 125 

of a church committee in Connecticut and New 
Haven towns was the seating of the congregation. 
A transfer of a family from one seat to another 
betokened a social rise or fall. In the smaller 
towns, such transfers were usually made by a ma- 
jority vote at a town meeting; and the town 
records have numberless entries of permissions 
granted to fortunate and rising men to sit " in the 
justice's pew," or " in the cross pew by the sec- 
ond pillar," or " in the second pew on the right," 
the proper places for their wives, on their side of 
the house, being as carefully specified. 

Finally the meeting house was used for a long 
time for every variety of secular purposes, not 
only as a place for town and other meetings, but 
as a place of deposit for arms, military provisions, 
and lost or stolen property. The Hartford church 
building was not merely the scene of ecclesiastical 
councils : the meetings of the New England com- 
missioners, of deputies from other commonwealths, 
and even the exciting conferences with Andros in 
regard to the charter, took place here. It was not 
until toward the middle of the next century that 
the towns began to see the incongruity of secular 
business in a dedicated house of worship, and be- 
gan to erect townhouses and other distinctively 
public buildings. 

Bad as were the roads of the United States al- 
most everywhere until the era of turnpikes set in, 
and railroads in their turn forced the turnpikes up 



126 CONNECTICUT. 

to a higher standard, the roads of Hartford and its 
neighborhood had a certain evil preeminence. The 
excellence of the soil was reflected in the. bad char- 
acter of the roads. Its tenacious clay only needed 
moisture enough to become a weariness to the 
flesh of horses and of men. Within the last thirty 
years, says one authority, wagons have been seen 
sunk to the hub in the native clay of Pearl Street, 
close to the center of the city. In 1774 the town 
prisoners for debt represented to the general as- 
sembly that the roads were for a considerable part 
of the year so miry and impassable that no one 
came to the jail to bestow alms on the prisoners ; 
and they petitioned that the jail limits should be 
enlarged. What the roads must have been in 
still earlier days passes speculation. It may per- 
haps be that the early years of John Fitch, of 
Windsor, spent in annual experiences of the hor- 
rors of Hartford roads, were the influence which 
turned his attention to improving the waterways 
of the country by endeavoring to perfect the 
steamboat. 

Mr. J. C. Parsons "cannot discover that any 
land in the town is now in possession of the de- 
scendants of the original owners, having been con- 
tinuously in the possession of the family ; some, 
through female heirs, may possibly be so held." 
This state of things is common to most Connecti- 
cut towns, but it does not imply that the original 
stock is dying out. It is only a symptom of the 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 127 

universal readiness to transfer property and assume 
new property relations. There is hardly a Con- 
necticut town in which the names of the first set- 
tlers are not as absolutely numerous as at the 
settlement ; if there is any relative decrease, it is 
due to the superimposition of a foreign popula- 
tion. The old names, even the Christian names, 
show a remarkable persistence, and an equally re- 
markable persistence in the characteristic of prop- 
erty-holding, even though their possessors have 
exchanged family for other property. The origi- 
nal fecundity is shown in the fact, that, in spite of 
this persistence, it is the old family names which 
have shown a disposition to drift out of the com- 
monwealth by emigration. For this there have 
been four main channels : in early years, to Ver- 
mont, and so over the border into New York ; 
later, to Pennsylvania (Wyoming) and to central 
New York ; later still, to the Western Reserve of 
Ohio, and so throughout that State and the West ; 
and of recent years, to New York city, and thence 
in every direction. In addition to these main 
channels, isolated routes of migration have been 
, innumerable, so that Connecticut names are now 
to be found in every part of the Union. Such a 
steady stream of migration could not but have 
hastened this process of alienation of family prop- 
erty. Those who migrated soon disposed of their 
share of the patrimony, and it regularly passed 
away from the name, though not necessarily from 



128 CONNECTICUT. 

Connecticut names and stock. The absence of an- 
cestral holdings in the State is merely a redistri- 
bution of the original holdings. 

The Massachusetts man and woman of 1637-38 
are the exact social representatives of the early 
Connecticut settlers, except so far as the poverty 
and meagerness of the Massachusetts life of the 
time were still further intensified by the difficul- 
ties of an absolutely new settlement. There are 
said to have been but thirty plows at the time in 
all Massachusetts : what estimate shall we make 
for the new and struggling Connecticut colony? 
We have, unfortunately, no such Pepys as Judge 
Sewall for early life in Connecticut, but Sewall's 
hints as to the hardships of early Massachusetts 
life may well be reinforced and transferred to our 
commonwealth. The utter lack of a multitude of 
things which have come to seem absolute necessa- 
ries in the eyes of their descendants ; the difficul- 
ties of travel and communication ; the complete 
isolation from the outer world through the grim 
months of a New England winter, during which 
the sacramental bread in the churches was some- 
times frozen on the plates ; the bitterness of the 
winter cold even in private houses, where the ink 
sometimes froze in the inkstands within a few feet 
of the great fire ; the utter inadequacy of medical 
and surgical attendance ; the ignorance of and an- 
tagonism to the art of amusement in every form ; 
the incongruous mixture of the civilized and the 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 129 

savage, in a society in which a minister, trained 
in an English university, might be called away 
from writing a treatise on the dealings of the Eng- 
lish commonwealth with its former king, or with 
the American churches, to drive a drunken Indian 
out of his kitchen, or chaffer with a hunter for 
food or clothing, — these were social conditions 
from which the early settler did not escape by re- 
moving from Massachusetts to Connecticut, and 
they are more fairly within the province of the 
Massachusetts historian. 

There are, however, certain visible distinctions 
between the drift of public events in Connecticut 
and in Massachusetts which make it difficult to 
believe that there was not some hidden differenti- 
ation between the people of the three migrating 
towns and of the five which were left, which has 
colored their whole subsequent history. 

The difficulties between king and parliament 
were at their height when the Connecticut colony 
was founded ; and for more than half a century 
the relations of the house of Stuart to its various 
opponents formed the critical public question for 
the New England colonies. Throughout this pe- 
riod there was probably no great difference be- 
tween the underlying purposes of the two colonies 
under consideration. Both meant to preserve the 
public privileges which they had gained, to ex- 
tend their territory and jurisdiction, and to evade 
or resist the interference of the home government 



130 CONNECTICUT. 

with their autonomy. But the methods of Mas- 
sachusetts were peculiarly her own. There were 
strong reasons, in the history, traditions, and con- 
sistent public teachings of the colony, why she 
should pose as the pronounced champion of colo- 
nial liberties. On every occasion she seems to 
have felt it to be incumbent upon her to assume a 
more or less decided public attitude, and equally 
incumbent upon her strongest neighbor, Connecti- 
cut, to support her by a similar course. In very 
many cases Connecticut did so ; in fact, the most 
common criticism of her policy by her own people 
was that she was too apt to " trot after the Bay 
horse." But every case in which Connecticut chose 
to follow a policy of her own seemed to the Bay 
colony only an instance of unmanly defection 
rather than of independent action. 

The consistent policy of Connecticut, on the 
other hand, was to avoid notoriety and public at- 
titudes ; to secure her privileges without attract- 
ing needless notice ; to act as intensely and vig- 
orously as possible when action seemed necessary 
and promising; but to say as little as possible, 
yield as little as possible, and evade as much as 
possible when open resistance was evident folly. 
Much of the difference must have been due to the 
different circumstances of the two colonies. Mas- 
sachusetts, secure in the possession of a charter, 
must have felt always that, even if beaten down 
from any claim, she could fall back, in the last 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 131 

resort, upon her legal privileges. Connecticut, 
while without a charter, must have felt the same 
hesitation in following some of the leads of her 
neighbor which an unarmored vessel would feel in 
following some of the motions of an ironclad ; but 
the steady continuance of her policy after she had 
obtained a charter seems to argue some structural 
difference in the people. Her line of public con- 
duct was precisely the same after as before 1662. 
And its success was remarkable : it is safe to say 
that the diplomatic skill, forethought, and self- 
control shown by the men who guided the course 
of Connecticut during this period have seldom 
been equaled on the larger fields of the world's 
history. As products of democracy, they were its 
best vindication. 

The period closed in 1691 with the loss of the 
original charter of Massachusetts, the imposition 
of a new and restricted charter upon her, and the 
palpable and even conscious inability of her pub- 
lic men to make good by action the positions as- 
sumed in the past. The mortification of this de- 
feat was aggravated by the pronounced success of 
the Connecticut policy. The best of New Eng- 
land's historians has not hesitated to avow and to 
reiterate his conviction, not only that Connecticut 
left Massachusetts in the lurch, but that she al- 
lowed her application for a charter to be used by 
the royal agents as an essential instrument in the 
disintegration of the New England union and the 
final humiliation of Massachusetts. 



132 CONNECTICUT. 

Such a conclusion assumes far too much. It 
would have been just, in the first place, if Connec- 
ticut had ever imitated the Massachusetts posi- 
tions, and had given Massachusetts to understand 
that she had entered the union for the purpose of 
upholding the Massachusetts policy. On the con- 
trary, the Connecticut policy was a matter of no- 
toriety among New England public men from the 
beginning. The accusation of Massachusetts was 
wholly an afterthought to cover her own want 
of forethought in sacrificing democracy to class 
influence, and in thus drifting into a position 
where she was hopelessly stalemated. It must 
always have been baseless, except on the supposi- 
tion that Connecticut was in some maimer bound 
to follow her neighbor's lead, and to surrender her 
own right of judgment in every great emergency, 
a course which Connecticut was not bound or 
likely to take. In the second place, an admission 
of the legality, with an impeachment of the jus- 
tice, of Connecticut's policy, assumes that a decided 
adherence by Connecticut to the Massachusetts 
policy would have resulted in obtaining a more 
complete autonomy for all the New England col- 
onies, and would have saved the union. But this 
is mere conjecture, and improbable as well. It is 
no more probable, at least, than that Massachu- 
setts would have scored a success equal to that of 
Connecticut by following a similar line of policy. 
It is no answer to this to say that Massachusetts 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 133 

preferred failure, after an heroic resistance, to suc- 
cess attained by shifty and temporizing measures : 
the less said about the heroism shown by the dom- 
inant class of Massachusetts, in the events which 
culminated in 1691, the better. Its nullification 
of the articles of union in 1652-54 had taken the 
'life out of them : they never again showed any vi- 
tality, and the Connecticut charter simply gave 
decent burial to the corpse. 

The facts are, that these commonwealths were 
then hardly fitted for complete autonomy ; that the 
Connecticut policy obtained about as much as was 
practicable or best at the time, while the Massa- 
chusetts policy obtained considerably less. The 
spirit which still moves the Connecticut workman 
to invent anything rather than expend a foot- 
pound of energy uselessly, seems to have actuated 
the people from the beginning. They would re- 
ceive Andros, for example, most deferentially, 
make no sign of resistance until resistance could 
take its most vigorous and effective form : then 
the work was done thoroughly, and almost abso- 
lute silence followed until the next opportunity 
for decisive action. No one can study the history 
of the commonwealth without being struck with 
the individuality of the people, as shown in their 
public career ; or, without believing that that in- 
dividuality was not clue simply to circumstances, 
to their thirty years' struggle for a charter, but 
that it belonged to them even in Massachusetts, 
perhaps even in old England. 



134 CONNECTICUT. 

From their first settlement, Hartford and " an- 
cient " Windsor seem to .have gone quietly and 
steadily on in their natural course of development. 
Wethersfield had migrated without a minister, and, 
for this or some other reason, its course of devel- 
opment ran ill from the first. Within its first 
half dozen years of life, its neighbor towns and 
New Haven were compelled to offer " loving coun- 
sel " as to Wethersfield difficulties ; and Daven- 
port, of New Haven, put his into the wise sugges- 
tion that the minority should migrate again. The 
minority who acted on this advice settled at Stam- 
ford and formed a New Haven town. In 1644 
another portion of the Wethersfield minority, as 
has been said, removed to the New Haven juris- 
diction and formed part of the town of Branford. 

There seems to have been no defined method of 
turning a settlement into a political " town," be- 
yond the mere act of the general court in receiv- 
ing its deputies, until after the charter was ob- 
tained. It is difficult, therefore, to assign any 
exact date to the political birth of the early Con- 
necticut towns. The growth of the family may 
be traced in the steady increase in the number of 
deputies in the general court itself. There were 
seventeen deputies in 1649 ; twenty in 1650 ; 
twenty-two in 1651 ; twenty-five in 1654 ; and 
twenty-six in 1656-57, this number remaining the 
maximum until after the union was consummated 
under the charter. The increase came from the 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 135 

successive recognition of the new towns of Say- 
brook, Stratford, Farinington, Fairfield, Norwalk, 
Middletown, New London, Norwich, and the Long 
Island towns — Huntington, Southampton and 
East Hampton ; but there can be no pretense at 
accuracy in saying when each of these towns was 
first represented in the general court. Town rec- 
ognition seems really to have taken a somewhat 
different line, hinging on those ancient and im- 
portant functionaries, the constables. Professor 
H. B. Adams has said: " We do not suppose that 
this has always been a conscious standard for leg- 
islative action in the recognition of towns, or for 
the actual determination of town or parish units ; 
but we claim that without a constable, or some 
power representing the corporate responsibility of 
the community for the preservation of the local 
peace, a town would be an impossibility." His 
evident hesitation in making an assertion which 
would seem almost a truism to the Connecticut 
historian is another illustration of the unwisdom 
of confining the study of the New England town 
system to its phases in Massachusetts, as if it had 
been a thing peculiar to that commonwealth. In 
fact, it can be studied better, for many purposes, in 
Connecticut than in Massachusetts ; for the town 
in Connecticut was almost as free as independency 
itself until near the period of the charter, while 
in Massachusetts it was circumscribed from the 
beginning by commonwealth power. Professor 



136 CONNECTICUT. 

Adams will find his supposition, doubtful as it 
may be under the comparatively artificial Massa- 
chusetts system, emphatically confirmed under 
the more natural Connecticut system. We know, 
for example, that the Indian purchase on which 
the town of Norwalk rests was made in 1640, and 
that settlement began about 1650 ; and we infer 
from various circumstances that the purchase and 
settlement of Middletown took place about 1646- 
47. But the record of their " incorporation "is no 
more than a vote of the general court, September 
11, 1651, that " Mattabeseck [Middletown] and 
Norwalke " should be towns and should choose 
constables. As the collection of taxes and the an- 
nouncement of elections were among the functions 
of the constable, it seems probable that the ex- 
press or tacit recognition of the town's constable 
was in effect until the charter, a recognition of 
the town itself and of its right to choose deputies. 
The records really show no other. The difficulty 
of the general court in dealing with new towns 
was about parallel with the difficulty of the con- 
gress of the confederation in dealing with the 
quasi State of Vermont. 

A parallel indication of the growth of the col- 
ony is to be found in the tax-lists. The first dis- 
tinct increase of taxable property comes December 
1, 1645, when the general court granted a " rate " 
of £400, "to be paid by the country.'-' Of this 
amount £340 was to be paid by the three origi- 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 137 

nal towns ; £45 by Stratford and Fairfield ; £15 
by Say brook ; and £10 each by Tunxis (Farm- 
ington) and Southampton, L. I. In 1652 the 
" rates " were still confined to the towns just 
named, Southampton being omitted. It is an in- 
dication of the prosperity resulting from sixteen 
years' work that the assessed value of the property 
in these seven towns was now £ 70,000, as fol- 
lows: Hartford, £ 20,000 ; Windsor, £14,100; 
Wethersfield, £11,500 ; Farmington, £5,200 ; 
Saybrook, £3,600; Stratford, £7,000; and Fair- 
field, £8,900. In the following year, three new 
towns, Pequot (New London), Mattabesek (Mid- 
dletown), and Nor walk, are recognized in a draft 
of men for an armed force, as well as in the rates ; 
and the assessed value rises to £79,700. In 1661, 
just before the receipt of the charter, the assessed 
value rises to £84,137. The usual tax assessed 
upon this amount was a penny or a halfpenny, 
constituting a " rate " or a " half rate." 

Long Island had never been more than nom- 
inally under the jurisdiction of the Dutch. They 
had planted a few farms at its western end, but 
the rest of the island was a wilderness. Among 
the multitude of conflicting and unintelligible 
grants made by the council of Plymouth before 
its dissolution, was one to the Earl of Stirling, 
covering Long Island. The grantee seems to 
have claimed ownership only, not jurisdiction. In 
practice, therefore, when his agent sold a piece of 



138 CONNECTICUT. 

territory, the new owners became an independent 
political community, with some claims against 
them, but no direct control. The island was thus 
in much the same position as the Connecticut ter- 
ritory before the first irruption of settlers, and 
offered much the same attractions as a place of 
refuge for persons or communities who had found 
the connection between church and state grievous. 
A company from Lynn, Mass., bought the town- 
ship of Southampton from Stirling's agent, April 
17, 1640. There were at first but sixteen persons 
in the company, Abraham Pierson being their 
minister. This was the church which, first re- 
moving to Branford in 1644, when Southampton 
became a Connecticut town, finally settled at 
Newark, N. J. Easthampton was settled about 
1648, by another Lynn party, and was received 
as a Connecticut town, November 7, 1649. The 
town of Huntington, though part of it was bought 
from the Indians by Governor Eaton, of New 
Haven, in 1646, really dates from about 1653. 
May 17, 1660, it was received as a Connecticut 
town. There were thus three Connecticut towns 
on Long Island, in addition to Southold, the New 
Haven township. Between these and the really 
Dutch settlements at the western end of the is- 
land, there were English settlements in the neigh- 
borhood of Hempstead; but these acknowledged 
a much closer dependence on the Dutch authori. 
ties. 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 139 

Hardly any of the expansion of Connecticut, 
prior to the grant of the charter which gave a legal 
basis to its claims, was due to accident. In almost 
all of it we can see very clearly a provident de- 
termination on the part of the people to give their 
commonwealth respectable limits, and to turn to 
account every favoring circumstance in that direc- 
tion. Hardly was the Pequot war under way 
when the general court resolved to send thirty 
men to occupy " the Pequoitt Countrey & River 
in place convenient to maynteine our right that 
God by Conquest hath given us." And from this 
moment Connecticut maintained her right by con- 
quest to the whole of the present eastern part of 
the State with a vigor which was in itself strong 
promise of success. One secret of the common- 
wealth's success, in this as in the Saybrook and 
other cases, was the policy which it followed with 
adverse claimants, a policy which the politico-reli- 
gious constitution of New Haven prevented it from 
imitating. Instead of engaging in a struggle with 
a rival, the Connecticut democracy always en- 
deavored to adopt him, to make its interests his, 
and so to secure even a better title out of conflict. 
In the case of the Pequot country, it was John 
Winthrop, Jr., the former agent of the Saybrook 
proprietors, who developed an inchoate rivalry 
with the colony for possession of the coveted terri- 
tory ; and Connecticut's policy, carefully applied, 
not only strengthened her title to the Pequot 



140 CONNECTICUT. 

country, but gave her one of the best of her long 
line of excellent governors, and was in the end one 
of the chief means of obtaining her long desired 
charter. Winthrop's attention had been turned 
to the Pequot country. Fisher's Island, " against 
the mouth of the Pequot River," was granted to 
him by the Massachusetts general court, October 
7, 1640, with a reservation of the possibly superior 
title of Connecticut or New Haven ; and Connecti- 
cut, instead of taking any exceptions to the grant, 
promptly confirmed it. In 1644 Massachusetts 
gave Winthrop authority to " make a plantation 
in the Pequot country." He went to the place in 
the following spring, and in the autumn of 1646 
had gathered a few families there, and was begin- 
ning to put up houses. The claims of Massachu- 
setts were grounded on the fact that her troops had 
taken part in the conquest of the Pequots ; and 
the case was decided against her by the New Eng- 
land commissioners in July, 1647. Connecticut at 
once gave Winthrop a commission, September 9, 
1647, to execute justice in his town "according to 
our laws and the rule of righteousness." May 17, 
1649, the court established the boundaries of the 
new town and named its magistrates. One of 
these two dates, and most probably the former, is 
to be taken as the town's entrance to the list of 
Connecticut towns. On the latter date, the court 
suggested the name " Fair Haven," but the people 
preferred that of New London. 



CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION. 141 

The last of the Connecticut towns before the 
charter was Norwich, an offshoot of Saybrook. 
Its settlement was approved, under the name of 
64 Mohegan," by the general court in 1659 ; and it 
was summoned, October 3, 1661, under the name 
of " Norridge," to send representatives. 

The divergence between the Connecticut colony 
and its sister and rival of New Haven had become 
marked long before Monk began his march for 
London. The attempt has been made in this 
chapter to state some of the elements of strength 
of Connecticut. It had become a strong, well- 
balanced political unit, with a clear notion of a 
territorial goal to be striven for, and of the line of 
policy to be pursued in striving for it. Its democ- 
racy gave every man a personal interest in the main- 
tenance of the colony's claims ; and the results 
were another proof that " everybody knows more 
than anybody." Its towns were as free as towns 
could well be ; the right of suffrage was as nearly 
as possible universal ; it can hardly be said that 
there were any dissatisfied elements to be placated, 
or else to fester in the vitals of the commonwealth ; 
and the steady bias of the commonwealth toward 
civil and religious freedom had enabled it to find 
elements of increased strength in what might have 
been elements of intestine weakness. For twenty 
years or more, the " loving brethren " of Connec- 
ticut and New Haven lived on in entire satisfac- 
tion with one another's corporate existence. The 



142 CONNECTICUT. 

time had then come when the growing common- 
wealth found that the separate existence of New 
Haven was a complete obstacle to the natural 
course of development of Connecticut. The com- 
parative weakness of New Haven will come out in 
the narrative of the events which led to the union ; 
but it is fair to say in advance that one of the most 
effective of these weakening elements in New 
Haven was the apparent agreement of a part of 
her people with Connecticut rather than with their 
own colony. Freedom was more attractive in the 
long run than restriction. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNIONS 

The organization in which the idea of the 
American Union first cropped out, to exist a while 
and then to die away almost unnoticed, was the 
New England union of 1643. As Massachusetts 
was the most distinguished and influential mem- 
ber of this confederation, the full account of its 
origin and history should in fairness be reserved 
to Massachusetts historians. It will not be im- 
proper to say here that such a union had been pro- 
posed by Connecticut in 1637, just after the settle- 
ment ; but Massachusetts received the proposal 
with a demand that her right to Agawam (Spring- 
field) and to free navigation of the Connecticut 
should be recognized. Connecticut's answer was 
so " harsh " that the further consideration of the 
matter lapsed for some years. It soon turned out 
that Massachusetts had right on her side, so far, 
at least, as the jurisdiction over Springfield was 
concerned ; and the extreme confusion of English 
affairs, through the struggle between king and 
parliament, was an inducement to the New Eng- 
land colonies to suspend all minor differences, 



144 CONNECTICUT. 

and combine for common defense against the In- 
dians and the Dutch. In 1643 the union was 
formed, consisting of Massachusetts, Plymouth, 
Connecticut, and New Haven. Connecticut had 
not yet advanced far enough on the road to a clear 
comprehension of her future to make any objec- 
tions to New Haven's separate existence ; but New 
Haven's hurry to organize a systematic govern- 
ment and take part in the confederation seems to 
show at least a dawning suspicion of a possible 
conflict between her own interests and those of 
her neighbor. There was not yet any consider- 
able superiority of one colony over the other : their 
respective populations are estimated at 3,000 for 
Connecticut and 2,500 for New Haven. 

The leading reason for the formation of the 
union was probably the inability of the home gov- 
ernment, during the confusion of the civil war, to 
afford protection to the New-Englanders against 
the claims of the Dutch colony of New Nether- 
land. With the most amicable feelings on both 
sides, the Dutch colony, thrust in between English 
colonies to the south and to the north of it, must 
have been pressed more hardly as the English col- 
onies grew, until at last the question of the an- 
nexation or independent existence of New Nether- 
land must have called imperatively for settlement. 
But the feelings on neither side were really ami- 
cable. The New England settler was an English- 
man ; and the Englishman of that time had a 



THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 145 

chronic disposition to regard the Dutchman as a 
commercial rival, and an habitual intruder into 
places where he had no good excuse for being. As 
the New England Englishmen found themselves 
forced into nearer relations with the New Nether- 
land Dutch, the two parties met with many of the 
old animosities still unhealed. The grant to the 
New Netherland company by the States General 
of Holland, October 11, 1614, had covered all the 
territory " between New France and Virginia, the 
sea-coasts of which lie between the fortieth and 
forty-fifth degrees of latitude," that is, from about 
the present location of Philadelphia to the Bay of 
Fundy. This nominal jurisdiction was really con- 
firmed by the States General to the Dutch West 
India Company in 1621 for twenty-four years ; but 
in course of time the growth of English settlement 
compelled the Dutch to modify this nominal claim, 
and to rely on the discoveries of Hudson to support 
their claims to the district between the thirty- 
eighth and forty-second degrees of latitude, or from 
about the mouth of the Potomac to the mouth of 
the Connecticut. As the greatest concession to 
the English, based on the English charters then in 
existence, they claimed the coast from Cape May 
to the mouth of the Connecticut, from latitude 39° 
to latitude 41°. In answer to all these official 
and unofficial claims, the English finally relied on 
the voyages of the Cabots as entitling them to the 
whole coast, including the parts explored by Hud- 
10 



146 CONNECTICUT. 

son, which they declined to take as real discov- 
eries. But at first, with the possible expedition of 
one Captain Argal, of Virginia, about 1614, who 
is said to have compelled " the pretended Dutch 
governor " at the mouth of the Hudson to submit 
to the king of England and promise tribute, the 
English for many years quietly acquiesced in the 
Dutch settlement. Their objection was to the ex- 
tent, not to the fact, of the Dutch colony. 

The Delaware company, including nearly all 
the leading men of New Haven, had been formed 
for colonization purposes. Following the New 
Haven policy of purchase, the New Haven settlers 
had sent an agent in 1640, who bought from the 
natives a tract of land on both sides of the Dela- 
ware River. In the following year the New Haven 
civil authority asserted its jurisdiction over the 
purchased territory ; and a company was sent out 
which settled on the west shore of the Delaware, 
near what is now known as Salem Creek. This 
was under the governorship of Kieft ; and Wil- 
liam the Testy sent two ships in 1642 with a de- 
tachment of troops, who attacked the settlement, 
burned its houses and made the settlers prisoners. 
Remonstrance for this step was almost the first 
business of the commissioners of the New Eng- 
land union; but they got no satisfaction from 
Kieft. In 1649 Governor Eaton made another 
appeal to the commissioners for help ; but the 
commissioners were not disposed to enter upon a. 



THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 147 

quarrel at the time. They would refuse to assist 
any persons from any other colony who should 
attempt to settle the Delaware purchase without 
the consent of New Haven ; but they would not 
maintain the claims of New Haven against the 
Dutch by force. The failure of the scheme was 
a blow from which independent New Haven never 
recovered. Her richest men had ventured their 
all and lost it, and the colony was in sore straits 
for some years. 

The Dutch West India Company perceived 
clearly the growing strength of the English colo- 
nies. In reply to the appeal of the new Dutch 
governor, Stuyvesant, for authority to repel force 
by force, and for material aid, the home corpora- 
tion declined to think of war, which, they said, 
" cannot in any event be to our advantage : the 
New England people are too powerful for us." 
Thus left in the lurch by his superiors, Stuyve- 
sant could do no more than take the best terms 
obtainable ; and it is creditable to him that he 
kept his colony in existence more than ten years 
longer. His first step was to go to Hartford, to 
meet the New England commissioners in negotia- 
tion, arriving there September 11, 1650. He took 
high ground from the beginning. He insisted on 
having the negotiations conducted in writing; 
and, in his first letter, he not only protested 
against the presence of the English in Connecti- 
cut as an infringement on the undoubted rights of 



148 CONNECTICUT. 

the Dutch, but elated the letter at " New Nether- 
land,"' thus calmly assuming every point in dis- 
pute. The commissioners were not to be caught. 
They refused to receive the letter and thus ac- 
knowledge that Hartford was within the Dutch 
territory. He finally yielded the point, and a 
long correspondence resulted in an agreement to 
Bubmit all the questions between Dutch and Eng- 
lish to four arbitrators, two to be named by the 
governor, and two by the commissioners. Stuy- 
vesant named Englishmen as his agents, and the 
four agreed upon a settlement of the boundary 
matter, ignoring all other points in dispute as hav- 
ing occurred under the administration of Kieft. 
It was agreed that the Dutch were to retain their 
lands in Hartford ; that the boundary line be- 
tween the two peoples on the mainland was not 
to come within ten miles of the Hudson River, but 
was to be left undecided for the present, except 
the first twenty miles from the Sound, which was 
to begin on the west side of Greenwich Bay, be- 
tween Stamford and Manhattan, running thence 
twenty miles north ; and that Long Island should 
be divided by a corresponding line across it, " from 
the westernmost part of Oyster Bay " to the sea. 
The English thus got the greater part of Long 
Island, a recognition of the rightfulness of their 
presence in the Connecticut territory, and at least 
the initial twenty miles of a boundary line which 
must, in the nature of things, be prolonged in 



THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 149 

much the same direction, and which in fact has 
pretty closely governed subsequent boundary lines 
on that side of Connecticut. If these seem hard 
terms for the Dutch, and indicative of treachery 
on the part of their two English agents, it must 
be borne in mind that, by the terms of his instruc- 
tions from his principals, Stuyvesant had to take 
the best terms he could get. The treaty of Hart- 
ford was dated September 19, 1650. 

Peter Stuyvesant was probably not satisfied 
with the treaty, even though he was compelled to 
accept it. At all events, he soon furnished fresh 
occasion for negotiation. In the spring of 1651, 
the New Haven people fitted out another vessel 
for their Delaware Bay settlement. It touched 
at New Amsterdam, and its appearance put the 
last of the Dutch governors into a terrible rage. 
He arrested officers and passengers, and only re- 
leased them with sounding threats of the fate of 
any future New Haven expedition to the Dela- 
ware, on their promise to return at once to New 
Haven. Again the New Haven adventurers ap- 
pealed to the New England commissioners, and 
those officials this time espoused their cause. 
They wrote to Stuyvesant, charging him with a 
breach of the treaty, though it is not easy to see 
on what grounds; and a resolution was passed, 
promising protection to any Delaware settlement 
against all comers, provided it should number a 
hundred and fifty men. Still there was no colli- 
sion. 



150 CONNECTICUT. 

In the following year, vague rumors of an im- 
pending Dutch and Indian war nearly brought 
about the long expected struggle. As the New 
England colonies came nearer to the Dutch, the 
resulting complications with the Indians increased. 
The two Connecticut colonies, as has been said, 
had no difficulties with their own Indians after 
the downfall of the Pequots. Their main difficul- 
ties arose in the southwestern corner of the present 
State, in the district where now is the town of 
Greenwich. The district had been bought by its 
first owner, Robert Feake, as a part of the New 
Haven jurisdiction ; but the Dutch had seduced 
the first inhabitants, under Captain Patrick, who 
had a Dutch wife, to come under their jurisdiction 
and accept a place as a Dutch town. It had been 
agreed at Hartford that Greenwich should be 
restored to New Haven ; but the usual vices of a 
border settlement seem to have prevailed here. 
Later, in 1656, the deputies of Stamford at New 
Haven complained bitterly of the conduct of the 
people of Greenwich, of " their disorderly walke- 
ing among themselues, admitting of drunkenness 
both amonge the English and Indians, whereby 
they are apt to doe mischeife both to themselues 
and others : they receive disorderly children or 
seruants who fly from their parrents or masters 
lawful! correction ; they marry persons in a dis- 
orderly way, beside other miscariages." It was in 
this Alsatia that the troubles seem to have begun 



THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 151 

which broke out first in the war of 1643 between 
the Dutch and Indians, when the Dutch called in 
Captain Underbill, of Stamford, as their comman- 
der-in-chief, and in the course of which Mrs. 
Hutchinson, who had found refuge here from her 
Massachusetts enemies, was done to death by the 
Indians. Other Indian outrages took place at in- 
tervals in the neighborhood. A Stamford Indian, 
found guilty of one of the most atrocious of these, 
was taken to New Haven and executed by decapi- 
tation. " He sat erect and motionless," says the 
New Haven record, " until his head was severed 
from his body." There was enough trouble with 
the Indians in this quarter to make it a source of 
universal alarm when, in the spring of 1652, ic 
was rumored that Stuyvesant had induced all the 
Indians to unite against the English, and had sup- 
plied them with ammunition. The evidence of 
the existence of the plot was in the affidavits of a 
number of the Indians themselves, a class of evi- 
dence which ought of itself to have been Stuyve- 
sant's complete vindication. A majority of the 
commissioners, however, believed it, and based 
upon it an ultimatum to Stuyvesant. The accu- 
sation naturally made Stuyvesant very indignant, 
and he demanded a committee of investigation. 
The commissioners sent three distinguished New- 
Englanders to New Amsterdam to act as such 
committee. The tone of their letters was not con- 
ciliatory, or calculated to inspire the governor with 



152 CONNECTICUT. 

confidence in his judges ; and he refused to answer 
any questions except such as should be approved 
by persons whom he should select. His reason 
doubtless was his diffidence of his familiarity with 
the language in which the examination was to be 
conducted. But, as the persons whom he selected 
had " been complained of for misdemeanors at 
Hartford, and one of them had been laid under 
bonds for his crimes," the committee took the 
whole proceeding as a fresh affront, and judges 
and accused parted in still higher exasperation 
with one another. On the report of the commit- 
tee, whose members had obtained new evidence of 
Stuyvesant's duplicity and treachery on their way 
home, all the commissioners except those of Massa- 
chusetts declared for war. Massachusetts referred 
the question to her ministers, who declared that, 
while they believed the evidence against the Dutch 
governor, it was not sufficient to justify a war be- 
fore the judgment of the rest of the world ; and 
that the colonies should stand on the defensive, 
without declaring war. One of their number, 
who claimed to write on behalf of " many pensive 
hearts," took more warlike ground, and threatened 
the commissioners with the curse of the angel of 
the Lord against Meroz unless they declared war 
upon Stuyvesant. But the resolution of the ma- 
jority was more satisfactory to the Massachusetts 
general court, and it steadfastly refused to take 
part in an offensive war. The whole controversy 



THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 153 

is particularly interesting for the reason that it 
was the first in our history which shows the ten- 
dency which has finally controlled American con- 
stitutional law. All the parties acknowledged the 
binding character of the articles of union ; and 
the controversy went mainly to the construction 
of them, to the interpretation of the powers of the 
commissioners under them. The occasion was 
not, as it would have been in England, a dispute 
as to what the governing body had better do, but 
a dispute as to what the governing body had a 
right to do, thus showing that in the latter case 
there was behind the nominally governing body 
a recognized popular sovereignty superior to it. 
This debate of 1652 might very well be taken as 
the beginning of constitutional law, in the peculiar 
phase of the term which obtains in the United 
States and other countries having a written con- 
stitution. 

The unusual bitterness of the controversy had 
come largely, not from academic differences as to 
the construction of the articles, but from the gen- 
eral suspicion that the Bay colony was moved by 
the question of the tolls at the mouth of the Con- 
necticut River, already referred to, and by a desire 
to convince the associate colonies that Massachu- 
setts was their real head. Some of the western 
towns of Connecticut even made ready for war on 
their own account ; and it was when all prospect 
of war, either by colonial or home power, had van- 



154 CONNECTICUT. 

ished, that Ludlow in disgust left the colony which 
he had helped to plant, and went to Virginia. In- 
deed, the New England confederation was in a 
state of extreme confusion, and almost in articulo 
mortis. The commissioners had declared war ; 
Massachusetts had really introduced the first in- 
stance of nullification ; and the other colonies 
found it equally difficult to make war, in obedi- 
ence to the commissioners, without Massachusetts, 
or to keep the peace and satisfy their own people. 
Connecticut and New Haven kept a small cruiser 
in commission. New Haven decided guardedly 
that it would not do to begin war under present 
circumstances ; and it was not until April, 1654, 
that the Hartford general, court formally " se- 
questered " the Dutch fort of Good Hope, and 
banished the Dutch ensign from Connecticut soil. 
But both had great difficulty in restraining their 
people, and a small insurrection had to be quelled 
in Stamford. 

The relations between England and Holland 
had not been improved by the establishment of 
the English commonwealth. At the execution of 
Charles I., the Dutch States General had waited 
in a body on his son, recognized him as Charles 
II. , and refused even a reception to the English 
envoys. Cromwell's successful battle of Dunbar, 
in September, 1650, and his still more successful 
battle of Worcester just a year later, brought the 
Dutch to their senses, and they asked an alliance 



THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 155 

with the Commonwealth. The English parlia- 
mentary leaders, however, wished to make a suc- 
cessful navy the counterbalance to their too suc- 
cessful army. They passed the Navigation Act 
of 1651, which cut their rivals out of the carrying 
trade. There was an " accidental " collision be- 
tween the two fleets in May, 1652, when Blake 
called upon Van Tromp to lower his flag, and Van 
Tromp answered with a broadside. Again, in the 
autumn, Blake and De Ruyter met in the Channel 
in an indecisive conflict ; and in November Van 
Tromp drove Blake into the Thames, and sailed 
the Channel with a broom at his masthead. A 
few months later, Blake, issuing forth again into 
the Channel with a horsewhip at his masthead, 
drove Van Tromp in his turn into harbor. 

While the two great marine monsters were thus 
rolling heavily into collision, it was but natural 
that the little fish across the Atlantic should take 
a keen personal interest in the matter. Every 
accidental victory of Blake was to them an addi- 
tional hope of a parliamentary fleet, which should 
deal out justice to the wicked Dutch governor and 
his Manhattan associates. New Haven was espe- 
cially elate, for the relations of her leading men 
with Cromwell had always been particularly close. 
It was the battle of Naseby which had brought 
about that almost solitary touch of romance in 
Connecticut history, the "phantom ship " of New 
Haven. The New Haven people, feeling more 



156 CONNECTICUT. 

reason for relying on the rising fortunes of the 
Cromwell interest, equipped a ship of one hundred 
and fifty tons, freighted her, and sent her to Eng- 
land with an agent to endeavor to procure a charter 
from the new power there. It was in January, 
1647, that she sailed, and the ice in the harbor 
had to be cut in order to open the way for her. 
Nothing more was ever known of her : the seventy 
souls on board had gone to their account, and the 
material loss was so severe a strain on the colony 
that its leaders began to cast about for a new 
location, in Ireland, Jamaica, or elsewhere, — the 
Jamaica proposition being Cromwell's own. In 
June, 1649, so the story goes, the long-lost ship 
was seen beating up the harbor, towards New 
Haven. As the townspeople gathered to watch 
her, at first incredulous, then joyful, then hesitat- 
ing and awe-stricken, it was seen that there was 
but one man on her deck ; that he was leaning on 
his sword, and looked sadly on the gathered mul- 
titude. As she drew nearer, he pointed once to 
the sea, and then New Haven's phantom ship 
vanished from sight. 

In June, 1653, the joyful news was received 
that Cromwell had taken sides with the majority 
of the commissioners, and had enjoined Massachu- 
setts to desist from her opposition ; and that a 
fleet of commonwealth ships was at Boston, ready 
to help the New England union to remove the 
Dutch flag from Manhattan. The Massachusetts 



THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 157 

general court was angry, but not angry enough 
to resist openly. It still refused to raise troops 
for the war, but consented to allow the parliamen- 
tary commissioners to raise men in Massachusetts, 
if they could. Arrangements for an expedition of 
eight hundred men, to attack New Netherland, 
were in progress, when they were stopped by the 
news of peace between England and Holland, 
which had been concluded April 5, 1654. Stuyve- 
sant thus obtained another lease of life. 

There was at first a strong disposition in Con- 
necticut and New Haven to allow the union to 
lapse because of what they regarded as the perfi- 
dious conduct of Massachusetts. New Haven had 
even formally voted not to choose commissioners. 
But Massachusetts urged a continuance of the 
union so feelingly that commissioners were chosen 
as usual, and their meeting proved to be an ex- 
ceedingly amicable one. From that time the 
union went on through the rest of its brief exist- 
ence with little apparent friction. But it is as 
evident as anything can be that the heart had 
been taken out of it by the course of Massachu- 
setts in 1652. Nullification is nullification, whether 
the moving cause be worthy or unworthy ; and 
after Massachusetts had once successfully nullified 
the plain provisions of the articles, her confeder- 
ates could never again feel that perfect confidence 
in her future action which is essential to the use- 
fulness and even the existence of a league govern- 



158 CONNECTICUT. 

ment. A stronger tendency is evident every year 
to reduce the functions of the commissioners to 
matters of administrative routine, while the sev- 
eral colonies diverge more and more strongly in 
the protection of their own interests and in their 
peculiar development. 

For six years after the peace between England 
and Holland, the two Connecticut colonies went on 
in their course of development with few events of 
exceptional interest. Successive deaths were thin- 
ning out the ranks of the original settlers. Hooker 
died in 1647. John Haynes, the first governor of 
Connecticut, died in 1654, and his family seems to 
have become extinct soon after. Henry Wolcott, 
one of the most influential leaders of the same 
colony, died in 1655. He was more fortunate in 
his descendants : there was hardly a time for the 
next two centuries when a Wolcott was not in 
some post of trust and honor in the service of the 
Commonwealth. In 1657 and 1658 died Edward 
Hopkins of Connecticut, and Theophilus Eaton of 
New Haven. Hopkins had been governor of his 
colony in alternate years from 1640 until 1654, 
Haynes being chosen in the other years. He had 
married the sister of David Yale, a Boston mer- 
chant ; and his bequest to the towns of Hartford 
and New Haven founded the Hopkins grammar 
schools in those cities, as Elihu Yale's beneficence 
long afterward gave the impetus to the college 
which bears his name. Eaton had been chosen 



THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 159 

governor of New Haven every year from the 
settlement in 1638 until bis death. His loss was 
almost irreparable to his colony, coming as it did 
just before the crisis in her history. It is impos- 
sible here to do justice to his public services and 
his private worth. Bat there are some indications 
that in these respects he had surmounted obstacles 
which the official records have not fully detailed. 
His biographers claim that his numerous family 
" was under the most perfect government." If 
the facts found by the church trial of 1644, in 
which Mrs. Eaton (the governor's second wife) 
was censured, are to be taken as proved, Eaton's 
home life must have been a constant thorn in the 
flesh. Mrs. Eaton seems to have been in the 
habit of venting a very ugly temper in the most 
outrageous language to the whole family, from her 
husband down to " Anthony the neager." She 
slapped the face of " old Mrs. Eaton," while the 
family were at dinner, until the governor was com- 
pelled to hold her hands ; she pinched Mary, the 
governor's daughter by his first marriage, until 
she was black and blue, and " knocked her head 
against the dresser, which made her nose bleed 
much ; " she slandered Mary, falsely impeaching 
her character ; and in all points she seems to have 
been the type of the vulgar notion of a step- 
mother. She, the wife of one of the " seven pil- 
lars," put the church to shame by becoming a 
pronounced Anabaptist, walking out from the com- 



160 CONNECTICUT. 

munion service, arguing with Mr. Davenport from 
her seat in the audience, and expressing loud and 
exasperating approbation when he used the famil- 
iar formula, " On this point I will be brief." There 
seems to have been a good deal of human nature 
under the surface, even in New Haven. 

Davenport was still in New Haven : it was not 
until 1668, after the union of the two colonies had 
been accomplished, that he removed to Boston. 
In both Connecticut and New Haven, the healthy 
condition of the body politic was shown by the 
fact that new men were coming up prepared to 
take the places of those whom death was so rapidly 
removing. First among these was John Winthrop. 
Chosen governor in 1657, deputy governor in 
1658, and governor again in 1659, he became at 
once so necessary to the people of Connecticut 
that they changed the provision in their constitu- 
tion forbidding the immediate reelection of a gov- 
ernor, and he was reelected annually until his 
death in 1676. His son, Fitz John, following in 
his father's course, was governor from 1698 until 
his death in 1707. The Wyllyses, Talcotts, Wol- 
cotts, Treats, Shermans, and other families were 
sending a stream of young men into public life, 
and all of them were well fitted for it. One of the 
ablest of the new men was John Allyn of Hart- 
ford. Nominated to the board of assistants in 
1661, he was chosen secretary of state in 1664, 
and held that office for twenty-eight years between 



THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION. 161 

that date and his death in 1696. The personali- 
ties of the men of the time get little attention, 
unless their work is theological, as in the case of 
Hooker or Davenport, or their non-essential char- 
acteristics are such as to strike the public attention 
and so win some advantage for the colony, as in 
the case of Winthrop. The mass of the leaders 
pass slowly across the stage, doing their work like 
men, but leaving us hardly any notion of their per- 
sonal appearance or traits. The influence of the 
feeling is shown in the refusal of the Wyllys 
family to erect any monuments in their family 
burying ground. Said one of them: " If Connecti- 
cut cannot remember the Wyllyses without a 
monument, let their memory rot." In few cases 
is this general tendency more disappointing than 
in that of John Allyn. Hardly any trace of him 
is left beyond the cramped but legible writing in 
which he kept the records, and the work which 
those records detail. And yet it is quite evident 
that, whenever work was to be done requiring 
stubborn tenacity of purpose and cautious shrewd- 
ness of method, John Allyn's name always appears 
in the center of it. Like so many of his contem- 
poraries, he seems to have been entirely satisfied 
with the reward offered by the consciousness of 
effective work ; and we can only wonder now how 
much the commonwealth of Connecticut owes to 
John Allyn. 

Eaton's place at New Haven had been taken by 
11 



162 CONNECTICUT. 

William Leete, who served as governor of that 
colony from 1661 until the union of the colonies. 
He was one of the original settlers, and one of the 
seven pillars of the church at Guilford. After the 
union, he became deputy governor, 1669-75, and 
then served as governor from Winthrop's death 
until 1680, dying in 1683. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 

Monk's march to London came in the opening 
days of the year 1660. On the 25th of April, 
Charles landed at Dover ; and in July the momen- 
tous tidings reached Boston. On the vessel which 
brought them came Whalley and Goffe, two of 
the regicides : England was no longer a place for 
them. They stayed in Boston and Cambridge 
until the following February, treated at first with 
distinguished consideration by the authorities as 
well as by private persons. The first intelligence 
that they were under the ban of the new govern- 
ment made such a change in their treatment that 
they fled to New Haven, arriving there March 27. 
A royal warrant for their arrest followed them 
from Massachusetts through Hartford, but the 
messengers found their errand blocked at New 
Haven by the most exasperating obstacles. They 
had to yield to the magistrates' cautious regard 
for the Sabbath ; their documents were read aloud 
in public meeting, instead of being treated as 
secret-service business ; and, when the Sabbath 
came, they were regaled with a sermon from the 



164 CONNECTICUT. 

significant text : " Hide the outcasts ; bewray not 
him that wandereth ; let mine outcasts dwell with 
thee, Moab ; be thou a covert to them from the 
face of the spoiler." Davenport and his people 
were evidently in full accord with the regicides. 
Leete and the magistrates seem to have seen the 
consequences of their action ; but they continued 
to make use of every legal obstacle to thwart the 
arrest, and the messengers finally returned to Bos- 
ton empty-handed, though the two judges had 
been concealed at New Haven, or within three 
miles of it, throughout their visit. The " Judges' 
Cave," on the summit of West Rock, sheltered 
them for a month, and then they set out on their 
wanderings. Sometimes in New Haven, Guilford, 
or Milford, sometimes in their old refuge or like 
spots, they continued to escape their pursuers for 
some ' three years. In 1664, finding that special 
royal commissioners had arrived, charged with 
their arrest, they went to Hadley, in western 
Massachusetts. Their choice of a final refuge 
shows again the secret tie which seems to have 
bound together the New Haven people, the minor- 
ity of the dissatisfied Connecticut churches, and 
the Cromwellian element in England ; for Had- 
ley's settlement had been due to the secession of 
a minority of the Hartford and Wethersfield 
churches. This was the scene of their asserted 
appearance to head the settlers in repelling an In- 
dian attack ; and here Whalley died about 1674, 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 165 

and Goffe probably five years later. Their burial- 
place is really uncertain, though some have be- 
lieved it to be in New Haven. 

The authorities of Connecticut were as anxious 
as those of New Haven that no harm should come 
to the regicides, and the fugitives found as fre- 
quent and as secure refuge in Hartford as any- 
where else. But the difference of method showed 
itself in this as in other cases. When the regi- 
cides were really not within their jurisdiction, the 
Connecticut authorities always seized the oppor- 
tunity to make their zeal in the king's service 
evident. They overwhelmed the royal commis- 
sioners with warrants, letters of authority, and 
proclamations ; the colony was in a ferment be- 
cause of their haste to lay hands on the criminals ; 
they were his majesty's most faithful servants. 
Under the like circumstances, the New Haven au- 
thorities always showed a decorous satisfaction in 
saying No to the commissioners, which went far 
to discount the sincerity of their denials when the 
fugitives were suspected to be concealed within 
their jurisdiction with their privity. They could 
not but have been reported to the home authori- 
ties as a dangerous colony, the remaining quintes- 
sence of Cromwellianism ; and such reports could 
not but have had a strong influence on the fortunes 
of the two colonies in the charter struggle which 
followed immediately. 

The records of Connecticut show nothing done 



166 CONNECTICUT. 

in regard to the Restoration until March 14, 1660 
(61), though the vote then passed refers to a pre- 
vious decision at an informal meeting of the mag- 
istrates and deputies. On the date just given, the 
general court voted that Charles II. should be 
proclaimed king ; that an address should be pre- 
pared and sent to him, asking for " the continu- 
ance and confirmation of such privilidges and lib- 
erties as are necessary for the comfortable and 
peaceable settlement of this colony ; " and that 
the £500 which the Cullick estate was to pay the 
colony should be reserved to pay the expense of 
the application. The court of election, May 16, 
approved a draft of an address offered by Gover- 
nor Winthrop, appointed a committee to revise 
and complete it, and named the governor as the 
colony's agent in England in regard to the patent. 
This last is the first open mention of what must 
have been the burning desire of every Connecticut 
leader, — the obtaining of a charter to give legal 
title to what had been done by popular author- 
ity. At the session of June 7, the court finally 
approved the address which had been completed, 
renewed the governor's appointment as agent " to 
procure us a patent," and authorized him to draw 
on the treasurer for £500. From that time there 
is not a word about the charter in the records un- 
til they are blazoned with the triumphant entry 
of its reception in October, 1662, more than a 
year afterward. In the interim, the colony, hav 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 167 

ing done all that it could do, waited in sober pa- 
tience. Just as Winthrop was embarking for 
England, New Haven at last proclaimed Charles 
II. king, more than a year after the news of his 
accession had been received ; and the step was not 
taken until remonstrances had been received from 
friends at home, warning the colony of the evil 
impression which its continued silence was mak- 
ing there. The form has been called grudging 
and half-hearted. In reality, it almost demands 
the space for insertion in full, for the sake of the 
refreshing contrast which its simple and manly 
terms offer to the servility of the style which the 
habit of the times at court seems to have extorted 
from Connecticut. It is as follows : 

" Although we have not received any form of 
proclamation, by order from His Majesty or Coun- 
cil of State, for proclaiming His Majesty in this 
Colony; yet the Court, taking encouragement 
from what has been done in the rest of the United 
Colonies, hath thought fit to declare publicly 
and proclaim that we do acknowledge His Royal 
Highness, Charles the Second, King of England, 
Scotland, France, and Ireland, to be our sovereign 
lord and king ; and that we do acknowledge our- 
selves, the inhabitants of this colony, to be his 
Majesty's loyal and faithful subjects." 

Winthrop set sail for England in August, 1661. 



168 CONNECTICUT. 

He took with him the address and petition to his 
majesty, which had cost the whole intellect of the 
colony such prolonged labor ; a letter of instruc- 
tions from his principals ; and letters to Lord Say 
and Sele, and the Earl of Manchester, two old 
Puritans, now of the king's privy council. The 
instructions directed him to consult with Say and 
Sele, Brooke, and such of the original patentees 
as he could find ; to endeavor to obtain a copy of 
the Say and Sele patent, and have it confirmed to 
the colony, with such amendments as could be 
obtained ; and, in case the Say and Sele patent 
could not be come at, to apply for a new patent 
for the colony, with bounds extending " eastward 
to the Plymouth line, northward to the limits of 
the Massachusetts colony, and westward to the 
Bay of Delaware, if it may be." The southern 
limit is not mentioned, unless a recommendation 
to include the adjacent islands be considered as 
carrying the limits beyond New Haven and over 
Long Island. A contemporary protest from Con- 
necticut against the appointment of a boundary 
committee, cited by Atwater, would go to show 
that such was the case. " We conceive you can- 
not be ignorant of our real and true right to those 
parts of the country where you are seated, both by 
conquest, purchase, and possession, though hitherto 
we have been silent, and altogether forborne to 
make any absolute challenge to our own." The 
address to the king is of the most inflated style of 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 169 

the Stuart period of English. It begins with a 
regret that its authors are separated by so vast an 
ocean from those who are under the immediate in- 
fluence and splendor of so great a monarch, in the 
princely palace of his renowned imperial city, the 
glory of the whole earth ; and that a too early 
winter had hindered them from long since pros- 
trating themselves by an humble address at their 
sovereign prince's feet. It described the settle- 
ment of the colony just at the beginning of the 
sad and unhappy times of the wars in England, 
which its people had since been bewailing with 
sighs and mournful tears. It told how the people 
of Connecticut, all through the civil war, had 
been hiding themselves behind the mountains in 
that desolate desert, as a people forsaken, choos- 
ing rather to sit solitary, and wait upon the Divine 
Providence for protection, than to apply to any 
of the illegitimate governments which had arisen 
in England, their hearts still remaining entire to 
his majesty's interests. It implored his majesty, 
now that the beams of his sovereignty had not 
only filled the world's hemisphere, but had ap- 
peared over the great deeps in the New England 
horizon, to accept " this colony, your own colony, 
a little branch of your mighty empire." And it 
pleaded their poverty as an excuse for their pre- 
sentation of nothing more than their hearts and 
loyal affections to his majesty. It is hard to see 
how Winthrop could have read the document with 
a straight face. 



170 CONN EC TIC UT. 

The gratitude of the colony was a lively sense 
of favors to come : the petition which accompanied 
the address was as straightforward as the address 
was circamgyratory. It asked that the king 
would grant to the colony a patent in the terms 
of that formerly granted to the Say and Sele as- 
sociates, or of that granted to Massachusetts ; and 
that it might include immunity from customs, in 
order that the colony might recoup by commerce 
its losses in the Pequot war. The letters to Man- 
chester and Say and Sele besought their coopera- 
tion, which was heartily given. 

Winthrop's winter in London was spent to good 
advantage. New England historians have wearied 
themselves in detailing his advantages for such a 
negotiation in such a court, — his natural powers 
of mind, developed by sound university education ; 
his gentle manners, polished by continental travel ; 
the manly beauty of his face and person ; and the 
kindly, mature, and solid judgment which governed 
the whole man. The story is also told of a ring 
given to Winthrop's grandfather by Charles I., 
and now returned by the ambassador to the new 
king ; and the charter of Connecticut is attributed 
almost equally to the tactful courtesy of Winthrop 
and the filial affection of Charles. One can hardly 
help a suspicion, however, that the .£500, which 
the Connecticut leaders had placed at Winthrop's 
disposal, had a more considerable influence on the 
result than the histories have yet admitted. The 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 171 

new court had required some time to get warm in 
its seat before showing plainly the depths of ve- 
nality to which it was prepared to descend. The 
time for the disposition of places, and of all kinds 
of court favors, by bargain and sale, had now fully 
come ; and it was about this time that Samuel 
Pepys seems to have had his eyes opened to the 
fact that this was the way in which many of those 
about the cpurt did get their incomes. At any 
rate, there seems to have been no final accounting 
for the balance of the .£500 between Winthrop 
and the colony. Winthrop had gone primarily 
on his own business : so says the resolve of May 
16, 1661. The colony had ordered the munificent 
sum of <£80 to be paid to the governor as his salary 
for the year ; and it would not have been likely 
to have passed over a further claim of £500 for 
mere expenses, unless those expenses had been 
somewhat in the nature of a secret-service fund. 

There is a sentence in the petition to the king 
which may possibly have some significance. " May 
it please your majesty graciously to bestow upon 
your humble supplicants such royal munificence, 
according to the tenor of a draft or instrument, 
which is ready here to be tendered, at your gra- 
cious order." That Charles II. should have drawn 
up and offered to a Puritan commonwealth a char- 
ter under which, as Chalmers, sound royal author- 
ity, says, " over their acts of assembly there was 
no power of revisal reserved, either to the king or 



172 CONNECTICUT. 

to his courts of justice, nor was there any obliga- 
tion imposed to give an account of their transac- 
tions to any authority on earth," is hardly a con- 
ceivable theory. That a charter drawn up by 
Winthrop, and passing through some of the many 
secret channels existing at the court, should have 
passed the scrutiny of the king, more through favor 
for the channel through which it had come than 
through filial affection or liking for a chance ac- 
quaintance, is at least more easy to believe. For 
no more democratic charter was ever given by a 
king than that which Charles signed for Connecti- 
cut, April 23, 1662, giving it a government which 
lasted for a century and a half, until the adoption 
of the new constitution in 1818. 

The charter constituted a body politic and cor- 
porate, under the name of " Governor and Com- 
pany of the English Colony of Connecticut in New 
England in America," to consist of Winthrop, 
John Mason, seventeen associates named, and such 
other persons as should be made free of the com- 
pany thereafter (i. e., admitted voters), with all 
the powers of an English corporation and with a 
common seal. The freemen were to choose from 
time to time a governor, a deputy governor, and 
twelve assistants ; each " town, place, or city " was 
to send two deputies ; and the governor, assistants, 
and deputies together were to constitute the gen- 
eral assembly, with power to change times of elec- 
tion, to admit freemen (that is, to establish the 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 173 

requisites for the right of suffrage), to constitute 
judicatories, to make laws not contrary to those of 
England, to define the duties of officers and the 
manner of their election, to impose fines and pen- 
alties or revoke them and pardon offenses, to repel 
warlike attacks by force, and to hold the territory 
within the limits granted in trust for the freemen 
of the colony. Until the second Thursday of the 
following October, Winthrop was named governor, 
Mason deputy governor, and twelve of the charter 
members assistants. All the freemen and their 
descendants were to have the rights of natural- 
born English subjects. Finally, the territory of 
the colony was to cover "all that part of our do- 
minions in New England in America bounded on 
the east by Norrogancett River, commonly called 
Norrogancett Bay, where the said river falleth 
into the sea, and on the north by the line of the 
Massachusetts Plantation, and on the south by 
the sea, and in longitude as the line of the Mas- 
sachusetts colony, running from east to west ; that 
is to say, from the said Narrogancett Bay on the 
east to the South Sea on the west part ; with the 
islands thereunto adjoining." Connecticut was 
thus to have a domain stretching from Narragan- 
sett Bay to the Pacific Ocean ; and the charter- 
less and defenseless colony of New Haven was 
included within these limits. 

The charter was first produced and shown in 
this country at a meeting of the New England 



174 CONNECTICUT. 

commissioners at Boston, September 4, 1662. The 
New Haven commissioners must have sent the 
startling intelligence home at once, so that both 
the interested colonies must have known of it 
about the same time. The Connecticut general 
court records for October 9 note that the " pa- 
tent or charter" was this day publicly read in 
the presence of the freemen, and that a committee 
of three had been appointed to take the charter 
into their custody in trust for the colony. Hart- 
ford was then declared the capital ; the civil and 
military officers of the colony were confirmed in 
their places ; and a formal letter was drawn up to 
the constables of the towns, directing them to col- 
lect the taxes, and to distrain the property of de- 
linquents. Such laws as were not in conflict with 
the terms of the charter were validated and con- 
firmed. The right of suffrage was regulated by an 
order that all candidates for the privilege should 
bring a certificate from a majority vote of their 
town that they were persons " of a civil, peaceable 
and honest conversation," twenty-one years old or 
upward, and taxed in the lists for at least £20 
estate. This was a widening of the elective fran- 
chise, for the qualification had been fixed at £30 
since 1657. In addition to these enactments, a 
long series of resolutions was passed, all intended 
to strike at the weak spot of New Haven, and 
break up the political organization of that colony. 
Their details will be reserved until the statement 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 175 

of the events which gave them success has been 
made. 

On its part, the New Haven general court, at 
its meeting of October 15, merely appointed a day 
of fasting and prayer for guidance " in this weighty 
business about joining with Connecticut colony." 
Immediately after the fast, a New Haven town 
meeting disapproved any such union. At the 
freemen's meeting, November 4, and the general 
court meeting on the following day, a letter from 
Connecticut was read, enclosing a copy of the 
charter, and demanding the consummation of the 
union. Two answers were sent. The first inti- 
mated mildly that New Haven was not " expressly 
included " within the charter jurisdiction, and 
asked that the New Haven colony might remain 
" distinct, entire, and uninterrupted, as hereto- 
fore," until they could hear from Winthrop. The 
second, from the freemen, argued that the charter 
only empowered Connecticut to acquire and hold 
lands within the limits assigned, but did not author- 
ize it to interfere with the lands already acquired 
by New Haven ; and it besought the Connecticut 
authorities to wait until they could make appli- 
cation for a charter, and learn his majesty's real 
intentions, to which they meant to submit. Here 
the public records become silent until the follow- 
ing spring. 

But the inherent weakness of the New Haven 
confederacy, arising from its peculiar ecclesiastical 






176 CONNECTICUT. 

system and its restrictions on the right of suffrage, 
had already become visible, and were having their 
influence on the proceedings of both parties to the 
controversy. For some ten years before, an un- 
derlying spirit of dissatisfaction seems to have 
cropped out from time to time ; but the final out- 
burst seems to have been due, at least indirectly, 
to the Quakers. The New England commissioners 
had recommended the several colonies, in Septem- 
ber, 1656, to take measures against the Quakers. 
Connecticut complied so far as to direct that any 
town which harbored Quakers should be fined ; 
but the execution of the penalties against the sect 
was finally left " to the discretion " of the magis- 
trates. They seem to have exercised so much dis- 
cretion that the heretics, despairing of any chance 
of martyrdom in this quarter, gave Connecticut a 
comparatively wide berth. New Haven, on the 
contrary, went into the matter with more spirit. 
The court of magistrates itself undertook the trial 
of offenders, and every trial increased the number 
of criminals. The public and indignant criticisms 
of the Quakers and their harborers upon the meth- 
ods and manners of the New Haven jurisdiction 
must have been as fire to tow, when there were so 
many others dissatisfied by reason of more tem- 
poral circumstances. About 1660, the general 
court begins to have especial trouble in regard to 
letters attacking their civil organization and prac- 
tice. It looked upon all such offenses as not 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 177 

merely civil offenses, but as offenses " against the 
King of Peace, that had so long continued peace 
amongst them ; " and it punished them most rigor- 
ously. The number of its assailants rapidly be- 
came greater, as did the exasperation of the court, 
which was hardly ever out of hot water from 1660 
until the union was accomplished. In 1661 the 
dissatisfaction had risen so high that several of 
those chosen as magistrates refused to take the 
oath ; and the general court decided to make 
public declaration of its position. It acknowledged 
that the non-freemen had complained that " just 
privileges and liberties " were denied them ; but 
it declared that this denial was a part of the funda- 
mental system of the colony, established by law, 
from which it would not be diverted by any agita- 
tion ; and it added the hint that it was only neces- 
sary for the dissentients to join the church in order 
to qualify themselves for the enjoyment of the 
rights to vote and hold office. This declaration 
must have added fuel to the flame ; and the court's 
meeting in May, 1662, gives evidence of this. The 
record admits that there was " great discourage- 
ment upon the spirits of those that were now in 
place of magistracy ; " and it was no wonder. 
Cases were multiplying of men who, when arrested, 
denied the authority of the colony to make laws 
now that the king was proclaimed, and demanded 
of the marshal " whether his authority came from 
Charles the Second ? " These were awkward ques- 



178 CONNECTICUT. 

tions for New Haven to answer. As they multi- 
plied, the embarrassment of the court, and the 
hesitation of the doubtful mass of citizens, in- 
creased with them. The want of a legal basis to 
the colony's authority was already painfully evi- 
dent, even while its only antagonists were its own 
ill-disposed citizens : what was to be the difficulty 
of the case when Connecticut should set up her 
claims, and become an eager refuge and support to 
every one who should resist the authority of New 
Haven ? 

It was at this session that Bray Rossiter of 
Guilford, and his son John, the Mother Carey's 
chickens of the coming storm, first appeared on 
the scene. The father, as an allowed physician, 
had claimed exemption from taxation ; when that 
was refused, he excepted to the colony's right to 
tax ; and now he, with others of Guilford, was 
haled before the general court to answer to the 
charge of having sent some offensive papers to the 
court, and of having spread others abroad, " to 
the disturbance of the peace of this jurisdiction." 
Most of the accused apologized, the lamest apolo- 
gies being gladly accepted by the court ; but their 
statements all pointed to the Rossiters as the ring- 
leaders, and the court hardly knew what to do 
with them. There were present, says the record 
with half concealed bitterness, " Mr. Allen and Mr. 
Willis, of Connecticut, waiting to see an issue of 
the business, pretending to be friends to us and 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 179 

friends to peace, laboring with Mr. Rossiter and 
his son to bring him to some acknowledgment of 
evil." Finally a written statement was accepted 
from him in which he " owned that in several pas- 
sages and expressions he had been very rash and 
inconsiderate," and agreed to submit to the govern- 
ment " while he continued under it." The Con- 
necticut charter was soon to relieve him from con- 
scientious scruples as to the last-named clause. 
It is noteworthy that, in examining one of the 
parties, the court said that it " had met with this 
business both from Stamford and South old ; " and 
Southold sent no deputies to this session. A sum- 
mons was sent to the Southold deputies to see that 
the taxes were paid, and to report for prosecution 
all persons refusing payment. It is evident that 
the New Haven jurisdiction was already among 
the breakers. 

This was the state of affairs when the two gen- 
eral courts met in October, and the Connecticut 
body heard their invaluable charter read to the 
freemen. Then followed the first series of orders 
by which Connecticut spread out her jurisdiction 
over her neighbor. The people of Southold wrote 
that they had had notice from u Mr. Willis, of 
Connecticut," that they were within Connecticut's 
limits ; and that they had appointed Mr. Young 
to be their deputy. Young was admitted as a 
freeman and deputy, and was appointed magistrate 
for Southold ; and the people of that place were 



180 CONNECTICUT. 

directed to choose a constable, to whom Young 
was to administer the oath of fidelity to Connec- 
ticut. Similar applications were received from 
"several inhabitants " of Stamford and Green- 
wich, of Huntington and Oyster Bay, on Long 
Island; and these towns, with Mystic and Pawca- 
tuck in the district claimed by Massachusetts, 
were directed to choose Connecticut constables, 
for the constable seems still to have been the pivot 
of town authority. The court went further, and 
ordered that word be sent to the inhabitants of 
Westchester that they too were within the colony's 
chartered limits, and that they should follow the 
same procedure. In the new pride of the charter, 
the colony was ready to throw down the gantlet 
not only to New Haven and Massachusetts, but to 
the Dutch also. So fully had the colony taken 
its position, that, at the meeting of the following 
March, it was necessary to do no more, except to 
vote X20 to Mr. Rossiter. 

The letter to New Haven, and the answers of 
the New Haven committee and freemen, already 
mentioned, occupied the winter ; but the forces 
which were disintegrating New Haven met no 
check. The Connecticut committee, in March, 
1663, proposed nearly the same terms of union, 
which were finally adopted ; but New Haven re- 
jected them, on the ground that she had appealed 
to the king and could not prejudice her appeal. 
In May, New Haven sent another remonstrance to 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 181 

Connecticut ; but it is noteworthy that her offi- 
cers, then elected, took the oath " for the year en- 
suing, or until our foundation settlements be made 
null." In August, her committee showed further 
signs of weakness by proposing a series of a dozen 
questions as to the terms on which a treaty of 
union could be effected ; and the answer of the 
Connecticut committee certainly gave them full 
assurance of perfect equality and security for all 
their rights, except the exclusive privileges of 
church-members, under the New Haven system. 
In September, the New Haven delegates com- 
plained to the New England commissioners of the 
action of Connecticut, particularly of the appoint- 
ment of constables, " who are very troublesome 
to us." Connecticut answered, and Massachu- 
setts and Plymouth decided that, as New Haven 
had been recognized as an independent member of 
the confederation, any infringement on her juris- 
diction would be a violation of the articles of 
union ; and that any such act in the past ought to 
be recalled. All this time, however, the Connec- 
ticut authorities were quietly allowing their new 
agents in the New Haven towns to carry on their 
work ; and the results were that before the end of 
the next year the unfortunate colony of New 
Haven was deeply in debt, unable to collect 
taxes, and unable even to pay the salaries of her 
officers. 

At the meeting in December, 1663, the New 



182 CONNECTICUT. 

Haven court had received some poor encourage- 
ment in two letters, one from Winthrop, the other 
from the English privy council. Winthrop's let- 
ter was to John Mason, deputy governor, and 
the Connecticut general court ; but he had sent a 
copy to New Haven. He remonstrated against the 
appointment of constables in New Haven towns, 
and wished that all such proceedings should be 
suspended until bis return home, when he hoped 
to arrange an amicable union of the two colonies. 
His language as to his own previous pledges is 
curiously ambiguous : " And further I must let 
you know that testimony here doth affirm that I 
gave assurance before authority here, that it was 
not intended to meddle with any town or planta- 
tion that was settled under any other government ; 
had it been otherwise intended or declared, it had 
been injurious in taking out the patent not to 
have inserted a proportionable number of their 
names in it." Who can make out from this 
whether Winthrop means to endorse this asserted 
promise of his or not? The course of the two 
governors, indeed, is almost inexplicable. Win- 
throp obtains a charter, covering New Haven ; 
the New Haven authorities assert, without con- 
tradiction, that he had twice promised in writing, 
before setting out for England, that he would not 
have New Haven included under his colony's ju- 
risdiction ; and Winthrop finally makes this curi- 
ously roundabout admission, with which all par- 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 183 

ties seem afraid to meddle further. On the other 
hand, while Leete, the New Haven governor, ful- 
fills all his duties through the crisis with punctu- 
ality, his action always carries a suspicion that it 
is perfunctory ; his heart does not seem to be in 
the work. No one who has followed the records 
carefully will be at all surprised by the assertion 
of Hubbard and Mather, that the action of Win- 
throp in so framing the charter as to include New 
Haven was by the special desire of Governor 
Leete himself ; nor by the assertion of the Con- 
necticut governor and council in 1675, when 
Leete was deputy governor and present, with sev- 
eral of the former New Haven leaders, that " their 
[New Haven] conjunction with this colony was 
desired by the chief amongst them." Leete's 
action was repudiated by Davenport, in a letter 
to Winthrop, as " his private doing, without the 
consent or knowledge of any of us in this col- 
ony ; " " not done by him according to his public 
trust as governor, but contrary to it." And yet, 
so far from repudiating Leete, the people reelected 
him governor. The facts probably are that Leete 
and other New Haven leaders were quietly tired 
of the whole New Haven system, and despaired of 
their ability to maintain it longer ; that Winthrop 
ascertained this fact just before leaving for Eng- 
land ; and that much of the fury of words which 
was expended on the negotiations was meant to 
allow events to take their course, while the honest 



184 CONNECTICUT. 

and conscientious upholders of the old system 
were being satisfied and convinced of the futility 
of further resistance. The times were out of 
joint for New Haven ; and while the leaders were 
not disposed to help overturn their fathers' work, 
they were no more disposed to stand in the way 
of events. No doubt Winthrop was relieved to 
find on his return that Connecticut had gone on 
obstinately in her course ; and no doubt also Leete 
was no less relieved to impart the news. 

The privy council's letter was no more than a 
circular to the governors of the New England 
colonies; but as it was directed to New Haven 
among the rest, that colony took this as an evi- 
dence that the king had had no intention of ab- 
sorbing them in the rival colony. A sounding 
proclamation was issued at once. It rehearsed 
the special orders of the council in regard to New 
Haven, being careful to note the addition of his 
majesty's sign manual " in red wax ; " it stated 
the embarrassment which the colony was under 
in fulfilling the king's directions by reason of the 
refusal of some ill-disposed persons to pay their 
legal taxes ; and it cautioned all such persons to 
cease their opposition at once. It is almost pitiful 
to see the eagerness with which the colony, which 
had settled here in primitive independence, now 
seized on this straw of royal recognition ; and, 
however one may admit the necessity and benefit 
of the union, he can hardly help wishing that the 
manly little colony had not been forced into it. 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 185 

Connecticut had succeeded in stirring up a 
hornet's nest in almost every quarter. Her gen- 
eral assembly had appointed agents for the colony, 
with the powers of magistrates, in the New Haven 
towns on the mainland and Long Island, in the 
Dutch towns of Hempstead, Jamaica, Flushing, 
and Westchester, and in the Narragansett or 
Rhode Island country as far east as Wickford. 
Stuyvesant had appeared before the commission- 
ers at Boston, in September, 1663, to protest on 
behalf of the Dutch ; and the commissioners, 
while recommending a reference of the matter to 
them at their next meeting, took ground against 
any violation of the boundaries agreed upon in 
the treaty of 1650. The people of the Narragan- 
sett country were memorializing the Massachu- 
setts general court. New Haven's protests found 
a sympathetic audience in the majority of the 
New England union. Connecticut hardly seemed 
to have a friend. The state of affairs, however, 
had one favorable aspect : each of the other par- 
ties had too many interests of its own to attend 
to for any unswerving support of New Haven. 
Connecticut agreed not to make any present claim 
of exclusive jurisdiction over the Dutch towns ; 
and a more temporizing policy as to the Massa- 
chusetts contest left New Haven finally isolated. 
Nevertheless, that sturdy colony again resolved 
in December to make no treaty with Connecticut 
until affairs had been restored again to their origi- 



186 CONNECTICUT. 

nal condition. It also ordered that distraint be 
made for unpaid taxes. This last step brought 
about a significant hint of a readiness to resist by 
force. On the last day of the year, the Rossiters, 
who had gone to Hartford and secured a Connecti- 
cut constable and magistrates, created a terrible 
hubbub in Guilford before daylight. Guns were 
fired ; the inhabitants were roused and thrown 
into great confusion; and assistance had to be 
summoned from New Haven and Branford to keep 
order. Though this was accomplished, the object 
of the Rossiters was accomplished with it, for it 
was agreed that tax collection and distraint should 
be suspended for the present. 

New Haven's position was now desperate. 
There was no money in the treasury ; the towns 
were divided within themselves; there was no 
physical force to constrain the disloyal; and the 
authorities were either discouraged or faint- 
hearted. Leete called a special session of the 
general court in January, 1663 (4), and laid the 
state of the case before it. It still stubbornly 
voted not to treat ; and it named Messrs. Daven- 
port and Street a committee to draw up its griev- 
ances in writing. The committee's work is com- 
monly known as " New Haven's Case Stated." 
It is the most dignified and pathetic document in 
the whole controversy. It stated the origin of the 
colony ; its title by purchase ; its recognition by 
the Dutch, by parliament, by the king, by the 



THE CHARTER AND THE 17NI0N. 187 

united colonies of New England, and by Connec- 
ticut herself ; the promises of Winthrop ; and the 
turbulent and seditious practices of Connecticut 
toward her sister colony, contrary to righteousness 
and peace ; and it demanded that reparation be 
offered for the past, and security for the future. 
The document was in the form of a letter to the 
Connecticut general assembly ; and it is to be re- 
gretted that Connecticut's answer was by no means 
so dignified. Its tone is that of triumph and ex- 
ultation ; and its writers were evidently out of 
patience with long waiting. There are indica- 
tions, however, in a most amicable contempora- 
neous correspondence between the two commit- 
tees, that both parties had about accepted the fact 
of union as inevitable, and had pretty well agreed 
on its terms. At any rate, the New Haven gen- 
eral court ceased from this time to do any impor- 
tant business. 

The inevitable conclusion was hastened by an 
unexpected event. It was now March, 1664, the 
month in which King Charles made his grant of 
the territory then in New Netherland to his 
brother, the Duke of York. The grant covered 
the whole of Long Island, and the mainland from 
Delaware Bay to the Connecticut River, thus in- 
cluding both Hartford and New Haven within its 
limits. Little as they liked Connecticut, the New 
Haven people liked the duke less ; and the only 
apparent security against his government, for both 



188 CONNECTICUT. 

colonies, was in the charter of Connecticut. The 
news of the grant was brought to Boston by the 
fleet and army of Nichols in July ; and the down- 
fall of the Dutch government at Manhadoes fol- 
lowed in August. In the same month, Leete 
called a meeting of his general court, and in- 
formed them that their committee recommended 
submission. With great confusion and dissatis- 
faction, a vote to that effect was passed, then re- 
considered, and then passed again in about the 
same words ; but the people were still so stubborn 
that the vote amounted to little. 

In September, the New Haven delegates were 
admitted for the last time, and against the pro- 
test of Connecticut, to seats in the meeting of the 
New England commissioners. In October, the 
Connecticut general assembly appointed a com- 
mittee to demand the submission of New Haven, 
and to admit New Haven freemen as Connecticut 
freemen ; and it also appointed Leete and other 
New Haven leaders agents of Connecticut, with 
the powers of magistrates, to administer justice, 
and ordered all other officers to retain their places 
and perform their duties until the next election. 
In November, the representatives of Connecticut 
attended a meeting of royal commissioners at New 
York, to settle the limits between New York and 
Connecticut. This erudite body assigned Long Is- 
land to "■ the Ducke off Yorke," and all plantations 
lying eastward of a certain creek or river called 



THE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 189 

" Momoronack, which is reputed to be about 
twelve miles to the east of Westchester," to Con- 
necticut. This was accepted as the king's decision 
by the much-enduring New Haven colony. The 
general court, with " as many of the inhabitants 
as was pleased to come," voted to submit, but "with 
a salvo jure of our former right and claim, as a 
people who have not yet been heard in point of 
plea." Connecticut had renewed her first offers 
of ample security for equality under the charter, 
and in her answer to the notice of submission asked 
that all unpleasant reflections might be " buried 
in perpetual silence." When the general as- 
sembly met at Hartford in March, 1665, deputies 
from the former New Haven towns were present ; 
the proceedings were harmonious ; and Leete and 
three other New Haven leaders were chosen magis- 
trates or assistants. The colony of New Haven 
had ceased to exist, and ecclesiastical supremacy 
had given way to democracy. 

In October, 1665, in probable pursuance of 
terms before agreed upon, the general assembly 
ordered that two county courts be held at New 
Haven in June and November. These introduced 
trial by jury into the former New Haven territory, 
while they preserved to the people all that could 
be granted of their former autonomy. In May, 
1666, the general assembly proceeded to divide 
the commonwealth into four counties, the bound- 



190 CONNECTICUT. 

aries of New Haven county extending " from the 
east bounds of Guilford unto the west bounds of 
Milford." This made a change in the common- 
wealth's judicial system. Until 1665, the highest 
judicial body was the particular court, composed 
of the governor or deputy and the magistrates. 
From 1665 until 1711, the particular court was 
succeeded by the court of assistants, seven of the 
twelve assistants chosen by the general assembly. 
The superior court was introduced in 1711, and 
the supreme court of errors and appeals, composed 
of the governor and assistants, in 1784. From 
1807 until 1855, the latter was composed of supe- 
rior court judges sitting in bank y and, since 1855, 
of district judges. The commonwealth's court 
of assistants, however, did not sit at New Haven 
until 1701. 

Connecticut has played no small part in the 
development of the American Union, and in the 
peaceful conquest of the great western continent ; 
and her part would have been sadly marred if the 
integrity of her natural boundaries had been broken 
by the continued existence of the separate colony 
on the south. Her leaders of 1662-65 were bound 
by every regard to the future of the common- 
wealth to insist on the absorption of New Haven ; 
their insistence showed their foresight. And yet, 
even though the commonwealth emerges from the 
struggle with its natural outline unbroken, one 



TEE CHARTER AND THE UNION. 191 

may be pardoned a feeling of regret as New Haven 
sinks beneath the surface after her persistent 
fight for life. The county of New Haven does 
not quite fill the void left by the republic of New 
Haven. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE COMMONWEALTH. 1662-1763. 

Before the grant of the charter, the general 
court of Connecticut had begun to show the char- 
acteristics of a real commonwealth government. 
No exact point of time can be stated at which the 
transformation took place ; but there is a plain 
difference between the generally recommendatory 
tone in which the court was in the habit of ad- 
dressing the towns in 1 640, and the decidedly man- 
datory tone into which it had grown in 1660. As 
soon as the charter had given it the consciousness 
of a legal title to existence and authority apart 
from its town units, its drift in the assumption of 
powers heretofore left to the towns became some- 
what stronger, until the essential commonwealth 
interests had been brought under its jurisdiction. 
And yet it never lost the influence of the forces 
which had founded the colony. The Connecticut 
towns, while they were generally content to con- 
fine their work to the matters of purely local in- 
terest which had been left to them by the general 
assembly, had never any hesitation in resisting, by 
all peaceable means, any action of the supreme 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 193 

legislative body which seemed to them unjust; 
and the general assembly, in its turn, was always 
disposed to treat such town resistance mildly, and 
to seek for an accommodation rather than resort 
to force. 

During the century which followed the grant of 
the charter, Connecticut had but nine governors, 
excluding Andros. All of these, with the excep- 
tion of Wolcott, who was dropped by reason of 
accusations of extortion, served until death or ad- 
vancing age compelled the choice of another ; and 
as the elections were annual, the long terms of ser- 
vice speak well for the satisfaction of the people 
with the rulers of their choice, and for the conser- 
vatism and " steady habits " of the Connecticut 
people. 

For some years after 1665 the colony went on 
in comparative quiet, developing new towns in 
every direction, and disturbed only by boundary 
disputes with its neighbors, by King Philip's war, 
and by the temporary recapture of New York by 
a Dutch fleet and army in 1673-74. The latter 
alarm was short-lived. The forces of New England 
were set in array ; the English towns on Long 
Island returned gladly to the jurisdiction of Con- 
necticut for protection ; but peace between Eng- 
land and Holland restored the province of New 
York to the duke in 1674. The king issued a 
new patent for the province, in which he not only 
included Long Island, but the territory up to the 

13 



194 CONNECTICUT. 

Connecticut River, which had been assigned to 
Connecticut by the royal commissioners. The 
assignment of Long Island was regretted, but not 
resisted ; and the island which is the natural sea- 
wall of Connecticut passed, by royal decree, to a 
province whose only natural claim to it was that 
it barely touched it at one corner. The revival of 
the duke's claim to a part of the mainland was a 
different matter, and every preparation was made 
for resistance. In July, 1675, just as King Philip's 
war had broken out in Plymouth, hasty word was 
sent from the authorities at Hartford to Captain 
Thomas Bull at Saybrook that Governor Andros 
of New York was on his way through the Sound 
for the purpose, as he avowed, of aiding the people 
against the Indians. Of the two evils, Connecti- 
cut rather preferred the Indians. Bull was in- 
structed to inform Andros, if he should call at Say- 
brook, that the colony had taken all precautions 
against the Indians, and to direct him to the actual 
scene of conflict, but not to permit the landing of 
nny armed soldiers. " And you are to keep the 
king's colors standing there, under his majesty's 
lieutenant, the governor of Connecticut ; and if 
any other colors be set up there, you are not to 
suffer them to stand. . . . But you are in his 
majesty's name required to avoid striking the first 
blow; but if they begin, then you are to defend 
yourselves, and do your best to secure his majesty's 
interest and the peace of the whole colony of Con- 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 195 

necticut in our possession." Andros came and 
landed at Saybrook, but confined his proceedings 
to reading the duke's patent, against the protest 
of Bull and the Connecticut representatives. It 
may have been thought that this success would 
meet the approval of the Hartford authorities, 
but they were made of sterner stuff. While com- 
mending the officers and men engaged, they added 
significantly : " We wish he had been interrupted 
in doing the least thing under pretense of his hav- 
ing anything to do to use his majesty's name in 
commanding there so usurpingly, which might have 
been done by shouts, or sound of drum, etc., without 
violence." This lesson of unhesitating resistance 
was not lost on succeeding officers of the colony. 
In October, 1693, Benjamin Fletcher, the hot- 
tempered governor of New York, appeared at Hart- 
ford with his majesty's commission to act as com- 
mander-in-chief of the New England militia. In 
spite of the assembly's protest, he ordered out the 
militia, and went to the parade ground to review 
them. The commanding officer was Captain 
Wadsworth, who had saved the charter from An- 
dros. Fletcher began to read his commission. 
Wadsworth ordered the drums to beat ; and, says 
Trumbull, " there was such a roaring of them that 
nothing else could be heard." Fletcher angrily 
demanded silence, and the drummers hesitatingly 
complied. The instant the reading of the com- 
mission was renewed, Wadsworth shouted, " Drum, 



196 CONNECTICUT. 

drum, I say ! " Again the rattle began, and again 
the governor struggled for silence. When he had 
obtained it, Wadsworth turned to him and said, 
fc * If I am interrupted again, I will make the sun 
shine through you/' He then gave final orders to 
bis drummers, and the governor retired without 
having his commission read. 

Connecticut suffered comparatively little from 
the horrors of King Philip's war ; the lesson to 
her Indians had been too sternly taught for that. 
It is a little curious to notice how close the storm 
of war came to her northern and eastern bound- 
aries without overpassing them. There were burn- 
ings and massacres through the western borders 
of Massachusetts, and battles in Rhode Island ; 
but the Connecticut men regularly fought outside 
of their own colon}'. The colony, however, must 
have been kept in a constant state of alarm by 
the near approach of hostilities, and her troops 
were freely furnished, and took an active part. 
She kept in the field about one third of the New 
England forces. It was Major Treat, with a Con- 
necticut force, who relieved the Essex men at 
Deerfield, and drove off the Indian besiegers of 
Springfield and Hadley ; and in the great swamp 
fight, Connecticut's contingent of three hundred 
men lost eighty killed and wounded, or about half 
the total loss. In sober, manly, and striking lan- 
guage, the general assembly gave them a fitting 
epitaph : " There died many brave officers and 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 197 

sentinels, whose memory is blessed, and whose 
death redeemed our lives. The bitter cold, the 
tarled swamp, the tedious march, the strong fort, 
the numerous and stubborn enemy they contended 
with, for their God, king and country, be their 
trophies over death. Our mourners, over all the 
colony, witness for our men that they were not 
unfaithful in that day." 

Andros had come out as governor of New York 
on its recovery from the Dutch in 1674. All the 
letters of the Connecticut council, as the upper 
house of the assembly was called under the char- 
ter, show a standing distrust of Andros, which 
was a fitting prelude to their intercourse ten years 
later. Such distrust, in the case of an able man 
as Andros seems to have been, was certainly in- 
evitable. The state of affairs was worthy of no- 
tice. The Empire State of New York has little 
reason to envy the prosperity of the State of Con- 
necticut in 1886 ; the case was far otherwise in 
1674. At that time, an able, enterprising cava- 
lier officer, sent out as governor of the duke's 
province of New York, found his energies crippled 
with the management of a territory consisting of 
two fairly important towns, a few straggling set- 
tlements on the Hudson, and some disaffected 
New England townships on Long Island. This 
western half of Connecticut was just the strip of 
territory needed to make New York a province in 
reality, and to enable him to do essential service 



198 CONNECTICUT. 

against his majesty's enemies in Canada ; the 
duke had at least a claim to it; and the royal 
governor could not be expected to appreciate at 
their full value the objections of a set of Hart- 
ford Puritans to this most necessary absorp- 
tion. A boozing, incompetent governor of New 
York was an immense relief to the Connecticut 
authorities : a man of Andros's abilities had to be, 
and always was, dealt with at arm's length. His 
offers of help against the Indians were accepted 
cordially, but were always restricted to the exact 
service required. The letters which passed be- 
tween the two parties show a constant sense of 
the real situation, in their mixture of distinguished 
courtesy with occasional railing, and in the con- 
stant readiness of Connecticut to bristle up in de- 
fense of some point which the governor was al- 
ways ready to assure them was not of the least 
importance. The intercourse, however, gave Con- 
necticut a very fair knowledge of Andros's char- 
acter and methods, which must have been of ser- 
vice in the coming struggle. 

In the later years of Charles II., royal commis- 
sioners, headed by Edward Randolph, gave New 
England much distress, urging upon the home 
government the general neglect of the navigation 
acts, and the offensive independence of this quar- 
ter of America. Massachusetts suffered most ; 
and her charter, like the franchises of London, 
was vacated on a writ of quo warranto, Charles 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 199 

died in 1685, and his brother, James II., succeeded 
him. In July, 1686, Governor Treat received 
two writs of quo warranto against the colony of 
Connecticut, issued the previous year, calling upon 
it to show title for its exercise of political powers 
or abandon them. In December came another. 
In both cases, according to the colony's subse- 
quent letter to King William, the time set for ap- 
pearance had elapsed before the serving of the 
writ, so that the colony could make no defense, 
as perhaps was intended; but an attorney was ap- 
pointed, and every preparation made for what re- 
sistance was possible. Andros had been succeeded 
by Dongan as governor of New York in 1682 ; 
and the king was represented in New England by 
Joseph Dudley, a recreant Massachusetts man, as 
president of the royal commissioners. Dudley un- 
doubtedly did part of his work by endeavoring to 
persuade Connecticut to surrender her charter 
peaceably to the crown, promising to exert all his 
influence to procure her one equally favorable. 
The colony was not to be cajoled : aware of her 
impotence for open resistance, she followed her 
traditional policy, arguing and expostulating, 
never yielding a jot, but not resorting to action 
until the time for action was fully come. 

In December, 1686, the Hartford authorities 
were called upon to measure their strength again 
with their old antagonist. Andros had landed at 
Boston, commissioned as governor of all New 



200 CONNECTICUT. 

England, and bent on abrogating the charters. 
Following Dudley's lead, he wrote to Treat, sug- 
gesting that by this time the trial of the writs had 
certainly gone against the colony ; and that the 
authorities would do much to commend the colony 
to his majesty's good pleasure by entering a for- 
mal surrender of the charter. The colony author- 
ities were possibly as well versed in the law of the 
case as Andros, and they took good care to do 
nothing of the sort ; and, as the event showed, 
they thus saved the charter. 

The assembly met as usual in October, 1687 ; 
but their records show that they were in profound 
doubt and distress. Andros was with them, accom- 
panied by some sixty regular soldiers, to enforce his 
demand for the charter. It is certain that he did 
not get it, though the records, as usual, are cau- 
tious enough to give no reason why. Tradition is 
responsible for the story of the charter oak. The 
assembly had met the royal governor in the meet- 
ing-house ; the demand for the charter had been 
made ; and the assembly had exhausted the re- 
sources of language to show to Andros how dear 
it was to them, and how impossible it was to give 
it up. Andros was immovable ; he had watched 
that charter with longing eyes from the banks of 
the Hudson, and he had no intention of giving up 
his object now that the king had put him in power 
on the banks of the Connecticut. Toward even- 
ing the case had become desperate. The little 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 201 

democracy was at last driven into a corner, where 
its old policy seemed no longer available ; it must 
resist openly, or make a formal surrender of its 
charter. Just as the lights were lighted, the legal 
authorities yielded so far as to order the precious 
document to be brought in and laid on the table 
before the eyes of Andros. Then came a little 
more debate. Suddenly the lights were blown 
out ; Captain Wadsworth, of Hartford, carried off 
the charter, and hid it in a hollow oak-tree on the 
estate of the Wyllyses, just across the " riveret ; " 
and when the lights were relighted, the colony was 
no longer able to comply with Andros's demand for 
a surrender. Although the account of the affair 
is traditional, it is difficult to see any good grounds 
for impeaching it on that account. It supplies, 
in the simplest and most natural manner, a blauk 
in the Hartford proceedings of Andros wiiich 
would otherwise be quite unaccountable. His 
plain purpose was to force Connecticut into a po- 
sition where she must either surrender the charter 
or resist openly. He failed : the charter never 
was in his possession ; and the official records as- 
sign no reason for his failure. The colony was 
too prudent, and Andros too proud, to put the 
true reason on record. Tradition supplies the gap 
with an exactness which proves itself. 

Having done all that men could do, Treat and 
his associates bowed for the time to superior force. 
Andros was allowed to read his commission, and 



202 CONNECTICUT. 

Treat, Fitz-John and Wait Winthrop, and John 
Allyn received appointments as members of his 
council for New England. John Allyn made 
what the governor doubtless considered to be the 
closing record for all time. But it is noteworthy 
that the record was so written as to flatter An- 
dros's vanity, while it really put in terms a decla- 
ration of overpowering force, on which the com- 
monwealth finally succeeded in saving her charter 
from invalidation. It is as follows : 

u At a General Court at Hartford, October 
31st, 1687, his excellency, Sir Edmund Andross, 
knight and Captain General and Governor of His 
Majesty's territories and dominions in New Eng- 
land, by order of His Majesty James the Second, 
King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, 
the 31st of October, 1687, took into his hands 
the government of the colony of Connecticut, it 
being by His Majesty annexed to Massachusetts 
and other colonies under his excellency's govern- 

ment "FINIS." 

The government was destined to last far longer 
than either the governor or his government. But, 
while it lasted, Andros's government was bitterly 
hated, and with good reason. The reasons are 
more peculiarly appropriate to the history of 
Massachusetts, where they were felt more keenly 
than in Connecticut ; but even in Connecticut, 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 203 

poor as was the field for plunder, and distant as it 
was from the " ring " which surrounded Andros, 
the exactions of the new system were wellnigh 
intolerable to a people whose annual expense of 
government had been carefully kept down to the 
lowest limits, so that, says Bancroft, they " did 
not exceed four thousand dollars ; and the wages 
of the chief justice were ten shillings a day while 
on service." The feeling in Connecticut is well 
represented in the story of the answer made to 
Andros himself, when he asked somewhat suspi- 
ciously for the reason of the proclamation of a fast- 
day : " Sir, this kind goeth not out but by prayer 
and fasting." There were not lacking incitements 
to premature insurrection ; there were letters 
from hot-headed friends in England, telling them 
that they were " but a company of hens " if they 
did not revive their charter by force; and the 
Andros party had private intelligence implicating 
various leaders in some vague plot for a revolt. 
But the people were, as ever, self-restrained. The 
letters of Treat and Allyn to Andros are models of 
courtesy, as of faithful stewards who thought only 
of his interests. The colony waited patiently for 
the precise moment when it could strike most ef- 
fectively, and then it struck once and for all, with 
all the strength that was in it. 

April, 1689, came at last. The people of Bos- 
ton, at the first news of the English Revolution, 
clapped Andros into custody. May 9, the old 



204 CONNECTICUT. 

Connecticut authorities quietly resumed their func- 
tions, and called the assembly together for the 
following month. William and Mary were pro- 
claimed with great fervor. Not a word was said 
about the disappearance or reappearance of the 
charter ; but the charter government was put into 
full effect again, as if Andros had never inter- 
rupted it. An address was sent to the king, asking 
that the charter be no further interfered with; 
but operations under it went on as before. No de- 
cided action was taken by the home government 
for some years, except that its appointment of the 
New York governor, Fletcher, to the command of 
the Connecticut militia, implied a decision that the 
Connecticut charter had been superseded. Late 
in 1693, Fitz John Winthrop was sent to England 
as agent to obtain a confirmation of the charter. 
He secured an emphatic legal opinion from Attor- 
ney General Somers, backed by those of Treby 
and Ward, that the charter was entirely valid, 
Treby's concurrent opinion taking this shape : " I 
am of the same opinion, and, as this matter is 
stated, there is no ground of doubt." The basis of 
the opinion was that the charter had been granted 
under the great seal ; that it had not been surren- 
dered under the common seal of the colony, nor had 
any judgment of record been entered against it; 
that its operation had merely been interfered with 
by overpowering force ; that the charter therefore 
remained valid ; and that the peaceable submission 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 205 

of the colony to Andros was merely an illegal sus- 
pension of lawful authority. In other words, the 
passive attitude of the colonial government had 
disarmed Andros so far as to stop the legal pro- 
ceedings necessary to forfeit the charter ; and then 
prompt action, at the critical moment, secured all 
that could be secured under the circumstances. 
William was willing enough to retain all possible 
fruits of James's tyranny, as he showed by enforc- 
ing the forfeiture of the Massachusetts charter ; but 
the law in this case was too plain, and he ratified 
the lawyers' opinion in April, 1694. The charter 
had escaped its enemies at last, and its escape is a 
monument of one of the advantages of a real democ- 
racy. For fifty years, every man in the common- 
wealth had felt the maintenance of the common- 
wealth to be his own personal concern, and had been 
willing not only to die for it, but to live for it, work 
for it, and exercise the highest sort of self-control 
for it. Out of this mass there had been evolved a 
class of representative men, who were in the highest 
degree capable of seeing and -doing just what was 
needed. Democracy had done more for Connecticut 
than class influence had done for Massachusetts. 

The settlement of the boundaries of the colony 
was a longer and more fruitful source of dissension 
than the legal government. On the west, the 
agreement of 1664 was superseded in 1683 by a 
new one between Connecticut and Governor Don- 
gan of New York, Andros's successor, in which 



206 CONNECTICUT. 

the quadrilateral, at the southwest corner of Con- 
necticut, first makes its appearance. Tt was agreed 
that the starting point of the line should be Lyon's 
Point, at the mouth of " Byram Brook," between 
the towns of Rye and Greenwich ; thence up that 
brook to the " wading place," where the common 
road crossed it ; thence eight English miles north- 
northwest into the country ; thence easterly to a 
line parallel to the first, beginning twelve miles 
east of Lyon's Point as the Sound runs, and to 
a place in that line eight miles from the Sound ; 
thence along this north-northwest line to a point 
twenty miles from the Hudson ; thence northerly 
to the Massachusetts border, by a line " parallel to 
Hudson's River in every point." If the quadrilat- 
eral first described came at any point nearer than 
twenty miles to the Hudson, the other northerly 
lines were to be run so much further to the east- 
ward as to give New York an equivalent tract of 
land. This threw Rye into New York, and recog- 
nized New York's old claim that Connecticut was 
to come no nearer to the Hudson than twenty 
miles' distance. It also gave up the line agreed 
upon in 1664, running north-northwest from Ma- 
maroneck, crossing the Hudson near West Point, 
and leaving the district east of it, including New- 
burgh, Poughkeepsie, and Kingston, under Con- 
necticut. It has since been rectified in various 
points, and the proposed line parallel to the Hud- 
son has been straightened, but otherwise it is the 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 207 

basis of the present line. Rye revolted to Con T 
necticut in 1697 ; but the king's confirmation of 
the line of 1683 in 1700 forced the town to return 
to New York. The whole line was established by 
survey in 1725 and 1731, re-surveyed by New 
York in 1860, agreed upon by both States in 1878 
and 1879, and ratified by congress in 1880-81. It 
should be added that the unnatural junction of 
Long Island with New York in 1664 carried with 
it the island called Fisher's Island, off the south- 
east corner of Connecticut, which had been granted 
to Winthrop by Connecticut in 1641 ; and it thus 
gave the southern boundary of Connecticut its odd 
appearance, running from the mouth of Pawcatuck 
River, at the eastern end of the Sound, to the cen- 
ter of the East River, at the western end. 

The northern boundary of the colony was not 
fully settled for more than a century. When Con- 
necticut was settled, the Massachusetts southern 
line was in the air ; and in 1642 that colony sent 
two men, Woodward and Saffery, to run the line 
according to the charter. The surveyors are said to 
have been ignorant men ; and Connecticut author- 
ities call them lucus a non lucendo, " the mathe- 
maticians." They began operations by finding 
what seemed to them a point " three English miles 
on the south part of the Charles River, or of any 
or every part thereof : " thence the southern Mas- 
sachusetts line was to run west to the Pacific 
Ocean. The two mathematicians, however, either 



208 CONNECTICUT. 

hesitating to undertake a foot journey to the Pa- 
cific, or doubting the sympathy of casual Indians 
with the advancement of science, and being suffi- 
ciently learned to know that two points are enough 
to determine the direction of a line, did not run 
the line directly west. Instead, they took ship, 
sailed around Cape Cod and up the Connecticut 
Kiver, and found what they asserted to be a point 
in the same latitude as the first. In fact, they had 
got some eight miles too far to the south, thus giv- 
ing their employers far too much territory ; but 
they had fulfilled their principal duty, which was 
to show that Springfield was in Massachusetts. 
An ex parte survey, and of such a nature, could 
not of course be recognized by Connecticut. The 
oblong indentation in Connecticut's northern boun- 
dary is a remnant of the ignorance of Woodward 
and Saffery ; for Massachusetts claimed a line run- 
ning just north of Windsor, and Connecticut finally 
reclaimed all but this oblong. She made ex parte 
surveys of her own in 1695 and 1702, and then 
both colonies appealed to the crown. This was 
evidently a dangerous tribunal for both ; and in 
1714 they agreed on a compromise line much as it 
is at present. Connecticut received, in return for 
her concessions, 107,000 acres of wild land in Mas- 
sachusetts, which was sold for about $ 2,500 and 
the proceeds given to Yale College. As surveys 
became still more accurate, it was found that the 
present towns of Enfield, Suffield, and Woodstock, 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 209 

which had fallen to Massachusetts by the agree- 
ment of 1714, were really south of the line, so 
that Massachusetts was governing territory outside 
of her charter limits. In 1749 Connecticut ac- 
cepted the petition of these towns to be restored 
to her jurisdiction, and they have since been Con- 
necticut towns. Massachusetts continued to claim 
the towns, but did not attempt to enforce the 
claim until 1804, when she finally abandoned it. 
In 1822 and 1826, the line was run as it now is, 
leaving the indentation to Massachusetts, perhaps 
as a memorial to Woodward and Saffery. 

" How the boundary on the east was ever fixed," 
says Bowen, " seems a puzzle ; " and he cites, very 
appropriately, Rufus Choate's description of it in 
one of its stages : " The commissioners might as 
well have decided that the line between the States 
was bounded on the north by a bramble bush, on 
the south by a bluejay, on the west by a hive of 
bees in swarming time, and on the east by five 
hundred foxes with firebrands tied to their tails." 
Connecticut claimed all the Narragansett country, 
up to Narragansett Bay, by conquest from the 
Pequots ; and Massachusetts, on the ground of her 
essential assistance to Connecticut, claimed a divi- 
sion of the spoils. Rhode Island was considered 
an unchartered nonentity by both. In 1658 the 
New England commissioners really gave judgment 
against Connecticut, assigning the Mystic River as 
the boundary between Massachusetts and Connec- 
14 



210 CONNECTICUT. 

ticut, thus handing over the whole of Rhode Island 
and the eastern part of the present State of Con- 
necticut to the Bay colony. The present town- 
ship of Stonington thus became a Massachusetts 
town, and was called Southerton ; and the Ather- 
ton Company, a Massachusetts association, whose 
leader, Captain Atherton, had bought large tracts 
of land- in Rhode Island from the Indians, and 
which had acknowledged the jurisdiction of Con- 
necticut, now passed under that of Massachusetts. 
The Connecticut charter in 1062, by carrying that 
colony up to Narragansett Bay, instead of clearing 
matters up, complicated them still further. Rhode 
Island then had an agent in London, soliciting a 
charter, which was granted in 1663 ; and it assigned 
as the western boundary of that colony the Pawca- 
tuck River from its mouth to its source, and thence 
a due north line to the Massachusetts boundary. 
To prevent a conflict, Winthrop had made an 
agreement with the Rhode Island agent, which 
was made a part of the Rhode Island charter, that 
the Pawcatuck River should receive the additional 
title of " alias Norrogansett or Narrogansett 
River ; " and that, wherever the Connecticut char- 
ter spoke of the Narragansett River, the Pawca- 
tuck River should be taken and deemed to be the 
one intended ! Connecticut at once repudiated 
this action of Winthrop as ultra vires, erected a 
town government at Wickford, and set the all- 
penetrating power of the Connecticut constable to 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 211 

work there. Then followed a period of great con- 
fusion, Rhode Island arresting Connecticut town 
officers, and vice versa, in the disputed territory, 
and Connecticut preparing to make her claims 
good by force, for the New England commission- 
ers in 1664 had decided the dispute in her favor. 

In the mean time, Randolph's royal commis- 
sioners, whose history in New England was that of 
a common and public nuisance, took the Narragan- 
sett dispute under consideration in 1665, without 
giving the parties any hearing or notice of it, and 
decided it in their usual impartial fashion. They 
decided that neither Connecticut nor Rhode Island 
had the slightest claim to the territory in dispute ; 
and they took it away from both, and erected it 
into a separate territory, to be known as the King's 
Province, belonging solely to his majesty. The 
title of the Atherton Company to their land pur- 
chases was decided in the same summary way : it 
was adjudged null and void, and the settlers were 
ordered to leave the King's Province. It adds to 
the oddity of the decisions that no one seems to 
have asked the commissioners to interfere. 

The country in dispute was in reality almost a 
wilderness, with very few settlers. Connecticut 
therefore allowed the Randolph decision to go with 
a protest, until it became obsolete as the royal 
commissioners faded like an unhappy dream out 
of New England's memory. From time to time 
she appointed commissioners to meet those of 



212 CONNECTICUT. 

Rhode Island, though the meetings came to noth- 
ing. Proclamations and arrests enlivened the lot 
of the lonely dwellers in the Narragansett coun- 
try; but settlement was retarded by the knowl- 
edge that the settler had to buy into a lawsuit of 
the most vexatious character. Rhode Island south- 
west of Providence was thus practically unset- 
tled except by Indians, when the events of King 
Philip's war embittered the controversy by rein- 
forcing the feeling of Connecticut men that the 
Narragansett country rightfully belonged to them 
by conquest as well as by charter. Their soldiers 
had fought in the swamp fight at Kingston, where 
the power of Philip was broken; their patrolling 
parties had afterwards scoured the country, and 
swept it of Narragansetts ; and all the time Rhode 
Island had looked idly on, and had never struck a 
blow for the coveted territory, for her neighbors 
or for herself. After renewed confusion, a new 
set of royal commissioners, in 1633, decided every 
point in the Narragansett controversy in favor of 
Connecticut. The prospect for Rhode Island was 
therefore dark. All of its present territory west 
of Narragansett Bay and southwest of Providence 
had been adjudged to Connecticut. All east of 
the bay, if the grounds of this decision were to 
hold good as a precedent, belonged to Plymouth. 
And Massachusetts, to the north, was in waiting 
with a variety of claims, and a general willingness 
to act as residuary legatee of the late colony of 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 213 

Rhode Island. It must have seemed certain that 
the existence of the stout little colony was to be 
limited to its first fifty years, and that its time had 
come. But its salvation came from the inability 
of its enemies to agree. The decision of the com- 
missioners was not confirmed or considered by the 
home government, owing to the troublous times 
of James II. ; and Rhode Island was enabled to 
deny its weight altogether. Then came Andros, 
who took Rhode Island's view of the case, and put 
her into possession of the disputed territory. She 
held to it, in spite of intermittent attempts of Con- 
necticut to exercise jurisdiction over it, and in 
spite of a decision of the English attorney general 
in 1696 in favor of Connecticut. Indeed, her per- 
sistency, and the ugly possibility of an appeal to 
England for a general decision, began to incline 
Connecticut to a modification of her claims. Un- 
der the charter of Rhode Island, her western boun- 
dary was to be the Pawcatuck River to its head, 
and thence due north to the Massachusetts line. 
If the Pawcatuck River be followed up to its source, 
as still given on Rhode Island maps, that point 
will be found in a pond just east of where the 
swamp fight took place, near Kingston, within a 
half dozen miles of Narragansett Bay. A line due 
north from this point would pass just west of 
Providence, and would leave Rhode Island only a 
narrow strip of territory on the west shore of the 
bay. Connecticut, giving up her first claim to 



214 CONNECTICUT. 

abut on the bay, now held to a literal interpreta- 
tion of the Rhode Island charter ; and it is not 
easy to see how her legal claim to the bulk of the 
disputed soil could be gainsaid. Khode Island, 
however, was really fighting for her life ; and her 
struggle was so persistent that Connecticut at last 
abandoned her old claim. In 1703 commissioners 
from both colonies agreed to follow the Pawcatuck 
River up to a branch called the Ashaway, thence 
a straight line to a point twenty miles due west of 
the extremity of Warwick Neck in Narragansett 
Bay, the northwest corner of the Atherton tract, 
and thence due north to the Massachusetts line. 
A subsequent attempt of Rhode Island to revive 
her ancient claim to the Mystic River as her west- 
ern boundary led Connecticut to renew her resist- 
ance to the settlement of 1703 ; but the English 
board of trade in 1723 reported in favor of the 
moral claim of Rhode Island, and showed a disposi- 
tion to make the dispute an excuse for uniting the 
two colonies in a royal government. Connecticut 
therefore joined in 1727-28 in running the line of 
1703, which, slightly straightened in 1840, has 
since remained the boundary. The legal grounds 
of Connecticut's claim seem to have been good ; 
but common justice to the different relations to 
the territory in dispute, which was vital to Rhode 
Island and only important to Connecticut, and 
common justice also to the obstinate fight made 
by the smaller colony, may fairly give reason for 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 215 

satisfaction in the final settlement. But it should 
not be forgotten that this was a case in which the 
smaller colony, if sufficiently determined, as Rhode 
Island evidently was, had a great advantage. She 
was ready to risk everything on an appeal to Eng- 
land; for, if she lost this territory in default of an 
appeal, she had little else to live for. In every 
crisis of the controversy, therefore, Rhode Island 
had a weapon in reserve to which Connecticut had 
no shield, for the last thing she wished was to 
come again under the general jurisdiction of an 
English tribunal : she had too many larger inter- 
ests, outside of the Narragansett country, which 
such a tribunal would undoubtedly bring into 
question, while Rhode Island had hardly anything 
else to risk. This weapon, brought promptly and 
resolutely into play by Rhode Island whenever it 
was necessary, gave her a victory, to which she 
was fairly entitled by circumstances, at any rate. 
Two disputes as to the soil of the colony remain 
to be stated. In 1635, just before the council of 
Plymouth disbanded it undertook to divide up the 
whole of New England into eight parcels, which it 
distributed among its members. The only one 
which gave any annoyance to Connecticut was that 
of the Marquis of Hamilton, running from the 
mouth of the Connecticut River to Narragansett 
Bay, and extending sixty miles back into the coun- 
try. Hamilton sent over an agent to examine his 
grant ; but, being a royalist, he was unable to 



216 CONNECTICUT. 

make any serious effort to colonize during the com- 
monwealth period. At the Restoration, his wife, 
now Duchess of Hamilton, opposed the charter of 
Connecticut ; and her claims were referred to the 
royal commissioners for New England, who re- 
ported against them in 1665, but in 1683 referred 
a new claim to the king. The ground taken by 
Connecticut was mainly that of limitation, — that 
the Hamilton family, having utterly neglected 
to prosecute their claim to the territory for far 
longer than twenty years, and until others had 
settled and improve4 it, were debarred from en- 
tering it now. On this ground, endorsed in 1696 
by the law officers of the crown, the council of trade 
finally decided in favor of Connecticut in 1697. 

The other case, which kept the colony in trou- 
ble for years and was finally extinguished by the 
Revolution without any real decision, was the 
claim of the Mohegan Indians. John Mason, one 
of the founders of Windsor, afterwards settled 
at Saybrook, was the military man of the colony. 
The records generally refer to him as " the Ma- 
jor." After the Pequot war, he and his family 
seem to have had an hereditary friendship for the 
Mohegans, which was a burden to the white par- 
ties to it. The Mohegans seem to have made 
treaties of land cession with prodigal generosity 
when drunk, and to have lied about them circum- 
stantially when sober. In 1640 they ceded their 
lands to Connecticut by an instrument which gave 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 217 

that colony power to establish plantations where 
it would, reserving certain lands to the Indians, 
and agreed to prevent other whites from settling 
in their territory without the consent of the Con- 
necticut magistrates. The territory covered New 
London county and part of Windham ; and it 
would be difficult to frame a more complete trans- 
fer than that made by the Indians. Mason settled 
at Norwich, in the Mohegan country, in 1659. 

Two different stories were told by the Indians 
about the deed of 1640. One was that it was 
given to Mason by Uncas when the latter was at 
war with the Narragansetts ; and that it was only 
to be used by Mason if Uncas were conquered, as 
he was not. This story was varied from time to 
time by another, quite inconsistent with the first, 
but less severe upon their friend Mason. It was 
that the deed of 1640 was understood by them 
as a mere trusteeship in Mason, as a man who 
understood the English people and English law, 
and could maintain the rights of the Indians. 
Mason's name is not even mentioned in the deed. 
Nevertheless Mason seems to have accepted this 
version. 

In 1671, the year before his death, acting as if 
the deed of 1640 had been made to him as trustee 
instead of to the colony of Connecticut specifically, 
Mason deeded back a large tract to them, entailing 
it upon them and making it inalienable. In 1680, 
again, Uncas obtained from Connecticut a confir- 



218 CONNECTICUT. 

mation of his remaining lands, expressly resigning 
all jurisdiction over all of them. Within a year 
or two he died ; his tribe was split into fragments ; 
it was impossible to trace any legitimacy of blood ; 
and the Indian claims fell into confusion worse 
confounded. The grandson of Mason, and the 
son of Mr. Fitch, the minister of Norwich, who 
were fast friends of the Indians, made their cause 
their own, and in 1705 they brought it to trial be- 
fore a royal commission, headed by Governor Dud- 
ley of Massachusetts, and composed of his party. 
The trial was a curious one. If there was any 
cause of action for the plaintiffs, it was impossible 
to find it ; the judges were determined to make 
the case a point of attack on the charter of Con- 
necticut ; and the defendant protested and refused 
to appear, on the ground that the commission had 
no powers to adjudicate the colony's title to exist- 
ence. The commission decided against Connec- 
ticut, and the colony appealed to the crown. From 
that time the case dragged along until the Revo- 
lution, decided again and again in favor of the 
colony, and appealed by the Mason family, whose 
personal interests had become interwoven with 
the Mohegan claims. After the Revolution, the 
Indians, content with the State's reservation, made 
no further movement to reopen the case. 

The commonwealth, its legal existence having 
been maintained and secured and its boundaries 
established, had a quiet and generally uneventful 



TEE COMMONWEALTH. 219 

history so long as peaceful relations with the 
mother country were kept up. Buttressed on all 
sides by other colonies, as in King Philip's war, it 
suffered little from the colonial wars except in 
men. But its immunity from immediate danger 
had no effect in checking its readiness to make 
common cause with the other colonies. Soldiers 
were provided freely by the colony, and did their 
part manfully. But the brief story of Connec- 
ticut's colonial wars will fall better under the 
financial history with which they are closely con- 
nected. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 1636-1791. 

It was probabty inevitable, under the circum- 
stances of time and place, that the first effort to 
establish a democratic commonwealth should be 
complicated with an ecclesiastical system entirely 
foreign to its real nature. Religious homogeneity 
almost compelled it. To the first settlers in Con- 
necticut, though not for the same reason as in 
New Haven, civil and ecclesiastical affairs were 
convertible terms. The township and the church 
were coterminous : the town, by which term, as 
distinguished from the territorial township, was 
meant the body of voters within the township, 
settled civil and ecclesiastical affairs indifferently 
in the same town meeting ; and as about all the 
voters were at first church - members and agreed 
closely in creed and methods, the dual system 
produced little friction for a time. It was inevi- 
table that lapse of time should disturb the origi- 
nal homogeneity and bring trouble. The effort in 
New Haven to put off the evil day by the practi- 
cal absorption of the state in the church led to the 
downfall of the commonwealth. The long contin- 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 221 

ued efforts in Connecticut to reconcile church and 
state under a free town system gave rise to diffi- 
culties whose history might fill volumes, and task 
the learning of an expert in church history. Ma- 
ther, no mean expert, said of one of the opening 
struggles that its origin was as obscure as that of 
the Connecticut River. The attempt of a mere 
layman to penetrate such a labyrinth must neces- 
sarily be hazardous ; and we are to venture in 
no further than relation is found to the peculiar 
development of the commonwealth. 

It will easily be seen that a reconciliation be- 
tween churches which acknowledged no earthly 
master, and a commonwealth legislature whose 
final authority was to be supreme, was a work of 
no little difficulty. The long and comparatively 
successful maintenance of the concordat in Con- 
necticut seems to have been due to the character 
of Hooker and the impress which he left on the 
ecclesiastical traditions of the colony. He and 
Davenport were fair types of the methods of the 
two colonies. Both were masterful men, even for 
that time. Davenport applied his force directly, 
and failed. Hooker relied on influence, and suc- 
ceeded. Most of Hooker's successors, in spite of 
an occasional slip into direct aggression, followed 
his methods with like success. With no official 
voice in legislation, and no direct appeal even to 
their arbitration, there was hardly an important 
piece of legislation which was not tested by their 



222 CONNECTICUT. 

approval or disapproval ; and it is to their honor 
that they were content with the substance of 
power, based on the confidence of their people. 
Only this mutual confidence, made the concordat 
possible. Many an act of the general assembly, 
which seems an interference with the liberty of 
tlic churches, was based in reality on the tacit 
approval of the ecclesiastical element of the col- 
ony. They were the voice of the ecclesiastical, 
speaking through the civil power. 

At the beginning, the Connecticut and New 
Haven churches alike were Congregational and 
Calvinistic. Each church claimed complete con- 
trol of its own affairs. In cases of doubt or dis- 
pute, it would submit to the decision of a council 
of neighbor or allied churches ; but the selection 
of the churches which were to form the council 
was always a matter for mutual agreement, or 
fresh disputes, between the two parties. The 
church knew no superior. It was begun by a 
common agreement in articles of faith by those 
who proposed to become members. The ceremony 
of the selection of the " seven pillars," already 
described, was peculiar to the churches of New 
Haven, Milford, and Guilford, and seems to have 
been in their cases an expedient of the leaders for 
the establishment of their politico-ecclesiastical 
system. A well-organized Connecticut church 
was at first supposed to have two ministers. One 
was the pastor, whose duties were mainly the ex- 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 223 

hortation, encouragement, and pastoral care of the 
members ; the other was the teacher, whose work 
was the doctrinal defense of the church and the 
instruction of its people. The ruling elder was 
the executive officer of the church ; but its success 
depended largely on the cooperation of the riding 
elder with the pastor. The functions of the dea- 
cons were those which have always been familiar 
in those officers. Back of all of them was the 
vote of the church, a Calvinistic democracy, un- 
defined in its powers, and ready, on occasion, to 
claim the full powers of an ecumenical council. 
When the union had been completed, there were 
fifteen of these churches in the colony : the Long 
Island churches, organized in the same way, had 
passed under the dominion of New York. 

The first churches were mostly small. Those 
of Hartford and New Haven were of course the 
largest. The church of Wethersfield, when it 
split and the defeated party removed to Stamford, 
numbered but seven communicants, the orthodox 
majority numbering four and the heterodox mi- 
nority three. Pierson's church at Southampton, 
on Long Island, numbered but sixteen. This 
paucity of numbers, however, was due to the 
promptness of the first settlers in organizing their 
churches. The church really began with the set- 
tlement. The first item in the Norwalk town 
records provides for the restraint of wandering 
swine ; the second, for the erection of a minister's 
house ; the third, for a pound. 



224 CONNECTICUT. 

The first great church dispute, which rent the 
Hartford church from 1654 until 1659, has been 
so complicated with the names of the actors and 
with doctrinal points, that one who is not a pro- 
found theologian can hardly make anything of it. 
There are indications, however, that an explana- 
tion may be found in the effort to accommodate 
the original church and state system to the chang- 
ing conditions of the people, and that the actors, 
however prominent, were merely floating on the 
surface of opposing currents whose nature even 
they did not understand quite clearly. Three 
points are of interest : the church establishment ; 
the connection of church and state, or rather 
town ; and the change in the people, with its ef- 
fects. 

The first code of Connecticut, in 1650, required 
that all persons should be taxed for church as well 
as for state ; and the taxes for support of the min- 
ister, and for other ecclesiastical purposes, were to 
be levied and collected like other taxes. So long 
as a trace of the establishment lasted, even down 
to the adoption of the constitution of 1818, the 
connection with the civil power continued. The 
church society used the civil tax lists in levying its 
rates ; the conditions of suffrage in society meet- 
ings were the same as in civil town meetings ; and 
the penalties for voting by unqualified persons 
were the same. The civil power collected the 
taxes for the church by distraint. If the church 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 225 

refused or neglected to support its minister, the 
general assembly settled the proper rate of main- 
tenance and enforced it on the church ; and if a 
church remained without a minister for more than 
a year, the general assembly could name a proper 
amount for ministerial purposes, and compel the 
church to raise and expend it. The principle of 
such connection was the ecclesiastical system of 
the commonwealth from 1639 down to 1818 ; and 
the successive " enfranchisements " of other sects 
were simply permissions to them to use the secular 
arm according to what had been at first the special 
privilege of the establishment. 

Considering the churches recognized in 1650 
as established, the commonwealth forbade any 
persons to form a new church within the colonv 
without consent of the general court and of the 
neighboring churches. The man, therefore, who, 
not being a member of one of the established 
churches, found himself within the territory of 
a church, was unable to vote in purely church 
matters ; but he was compelled to vote taxes and 
pay taxes for the support of a minister in whose 
call he had had no voice. From their estab- 
lishment, the churches had been strict in regard 
to baptism, and their inquisitions into the per- 
sonal experience of candidates for membership 
were searching. As the numbers increased of 
those who could not respond to such inquisitions 
and were thus barred from the church, dissatis- 

15 



226 CONNECTICUT. 

faction must have increased with them. It often 
took the shape of complaints that the children of 
such persons were refused baptism ; but it may 
be suspected fairly that the natural wish to share 
in the control of the church whose expenses they 
helped to pay had a great deal to do with it. 
Either the right of suffrage must be restricted to 
church -members, or all the voters must be let 
into the church. In New Haven, church-member- 
ship had swallowed democracy ; in Connecticut, 
was democracy to swallow church-membership? 

The Cambridge platform, adopted by a council 
of the New England churches held at Cambridge, 
Mass., in 1648, was intended to be the model for 
the church system of New England, and it governed 
the Connecticut churches for sixty years. Its im- 
portance was more in its recognition of church in- 
dependence than in any formulation of a creed. 
But, in spite of its recognition of church indepen- 
dence, there was in it the seed of state interference, 
so far at least as Connecticut churches were con- 
cerned, for it insisted " that the magistrate is to 
see that the ministry be duly provided for." In 
Connecticut the magistrate was really the town ; 
and the town's democracy would hardly be willing 
to support the church without at least trying to 
control it. The attempt was soon made by the 
general court, as the mouthpiece of all the towns, 
in the course of its efforts to settle the Hartford 
difficulty. 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 227 

In February, 1657, the general court called for 
a council of the New England churches at Boston, 
to consider certain propositions of the general 
court. The object of these propositions was well 
understood to be the widening of church-member- 
ship. The New Haven churches rejected the sugges- 
tion of such a council, and the purely independent 
element in Connecticut sympathized with them, 
for the decision of such a council looked straight 
to state interference as a means of enforcing it. 
Nevertheless the council met, and sustained the 
new rather than the old view. It declared that 
baptized infants were bound, on arriving at years 
of discretion, to " own the covenant " and become 
formal church-members ; and that the church was 
bound to accept them, if they were not of scandal- 
ous life and understood the grounds of religion, 
and was bound to baptize their children, thus con^ 
tinuing the chain of claims to church-membership 
to all generations. This made church-membership 
rather an affair of the head and of morals ; and it 
was deeply execrated by the New Haven churches, 
and by at least a strong minority of the Connecti- 
cut churches, for it really gave every baptized per- 
son a voice in church government. It was com- 
monly known as the Half-way Covenant. 

In 1664 the general court formally approved the 
council's decision, and " commended " it to the 
churches under its jurisdiction, which now covered 
New Haven. So far as it ventured to do so, the 



228 CONNECTICUT. 

general court thus made the Half-way Covenant, 
with its loose system of admission to the church, 
the ecclesiastical law of the commonwealth. But 
it was from the first a political rather than an 
ecclesiastical idea; it never was welcome to the 
Connecticut churches, and some of them never 
accepted it. 

To return now to the Hartford difficulty, which 
had been woven into every step of the progress 
toward the Half-way Covenant. Its nominal be- 
ginning was after the death of Hooker in 1647. 
Goodwin, the ruling elder, wanted Michael Wig- 
glesworth as Hooker's successor ; and Stone, the 
surviving minister, refused to allow the proposition 
to be put to vote. The Goodwin party, twenty- 
one in number, including Deputy Governor Web- 
ster, withdrew from the church ; the Stone party 
undertook to discipline them ; a council of Con- 
necticut and New Haven churches failed to recon- 
cile the parties ; the general court kindly assumed 
the office of mediator, and succeeded in making both 
parties furious ; and finally a council at Boston in 
1659 induced the Goodwin minority, now some 
sixty in number, to remove to Hadley, Mass. 

A larger struggle followed Stone's death in 1663. 
There were now two young men, Whiting and 
Haynes, in the places of Hooker and Stone ; and 
the new incumbents, in addition to their opposi- 
tion to one another, seem to have been about 
equally tactless. Haynes headed the Half-way 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 229 

Covenant party. He was supported by the church, 
and the ratification of this form of church disci- 
pline by the general court in 1664 strengthened his 
position. Whiting, with those who still held to 
the primitive doctrine of the necessity of individual 
experience and strict investigation of it before ad- 
mission to the church, was compelled to remain in 
a church which must have seemed to him and his 
party almost a heterodox body. Five years of this 
sort of life was necessary to convince both parties 
of the necessity of a compromise. 

In May, 1669, the general court advised that all 
persons approved in law and sound in the funda- 
mentals of the Christian religion should "have 
allowance of their persuasion and profession in 
church ways ; " that is, that they should have lib- 
erty to constitute another church within the town 
limits. This innovation had evidently become in- 
evitable. In October, Mr. Whiting appeared be- 
fore the court, applied for permission to form a 
new church, and received it. The Second Church 
of Hartford was thus formed the next year by Mr. 
Whiting and thirty-one families ; and the first 
breach in the original identity of town and church 
was accomplished. Further, as the members of 
the new church necessarily received the privilege 
of diverting their share of the taxes to the support 
of their own church, the principle of this more 
democratic precedent guided the slow emancipa- 
tion of all the other sects down to 1818. But it 



230 CONNECTICUT. 

is not a little odd to find that the new church, 
founded as a protest against the Half-way Cove- 
nant, adopted that practice from its very first 
meeting. 

However unwillingly the churches might accept 
the Half-way Covenant, it could not but affect 
their church -membership very seriously. The 
number of " strict Congregationalists " steadily de- 
creased, while the number of " large Congregation- 
alists," leaning to Presbyterianism, was as steadily 
increasing. " A church without a bishop, and a 
state without a king," was still the theory; but 
the state had now a regulator in the shape of a 
supreme legislature, and this was enough to bring 
about a desire for a similar regulator for the 
church. The general court evidently leaned to- 
ward a council of the churches, much after the 
fashion of a Presbyterian synod, as a fly-wheel 
to keep the churches in harmony on points of fun- 
damental importance, while allowing disagreement 
on minor points. The ministers had been in the 
habit of holding neighborhood meetings, and, after 
the union, county meetings ; but these were volun- 
tas, and their proceedings were limited to the 
special objects for which they had been called. 
This, however, was a germ for an establishment ; 
and the absolute power of individual churches to 
decide upon the qualifications of candidates for the 
ministry, and certain scandals resulting therefrom, 
furnished the occasion. 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 231 

In 1708 the general court directed that the 
churches of each county should send their minis- 
ters and " messengers," or lay representatives, to 
meet at their county town ; that the county assem- 
blies should settle upon what they considered the 
best system of church order ; and that delegates 
from the county assemblies should meet at Say- 
brook, at the coming Commencement, to draw up 
for the general court's adoption a commonwealth 
church system. 

The synod met in September, adopted the Savoy 
Confession as modified by the Boston synod of 
1680, and formed the Saybrook platform as an 
ecclesiastical system for the commonwealth. It 
directed that " consociations " of neighboring 
churches should be formed in each county ; that 
a church, or an excommunicate person with the 
consent of the church, should have the right to 
bring disputes before the consociation ; that a 
pastor or church refusing to be bound by the de- 
cision of the consociation should be put out of 
communion ; and that there should be an annual 
meeting of delegates from all the consociations. 
The scheme was at once ratified by the general 
court, and the churches united by it were " owned 
and acknowledged established by law ; " but per- 
mission was reserved to any church to " soberly 
differ or dissent from the united churches hereby 
established." This was about the measure of 
rights given to dissenters in England by the act 



232 CONNECTICUT. 

of 1689, under William and Mary. The dissent- 
ing churches were to be taxed for the support of 
the established churches. The establishment was 
a modified Presbyterian ism. There was no formal 
coercive power ; but the public provision for the 
minister's support, and the withdrawal of it from 
recalcitrant members, formed a coercive power of 
no mean efficacy. With its adoption, the Congre- 
gational churches of Connecticut passed into their 
semi- Presbyterian stage of existence; indeed, to- 
ward the end of the century, President Dwight 
uses the terms " Congregational " and " Presby- 
terian" as about convertible. 

The Saybrook platform brought order at once 
into the Connecticut system ; but worse than dis- 
order came with it. The tendency of such an or- 
derly system to a barren intellectualism, difficult 
enough to resist at the best, became far stronger 
when the church was dependent on the state for 
material support. Within thirty years, the worst 
symptoms of a purely state religion began to show 
themselves, and it required all the vitality of the 
churches, and a tremendous internal convulsion, 
to banish them. The great revival of 1741, be- 
ginning in the church of Jonathan Edwards at 
Northampton, Mass., and intensified by the preach- 
ing of Whitefield, Gilbert Tennant, and others, 
struck the first blow at the hitherto secure position 
of the Saybrook platform. Wandering revivalists 
disturbed many of the ministers, and their com- 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 233 

plaints found a sympathetic audience in the gen- 
eral court. That body passed an act in 1742 
which protected the churches rather more than 
the Say brook platform had given any reason for 
anticipating. It forbade under penalties the en- 
trance of an ordained minister into the parish of 
another minister to preach there without the invi- 
tation of the settled minister and his church ; it 
increased the penalty in the case of an unlicensed 
person ; and it ordered any foreigner or stranger, 
licensed or unlicensed, who should preach in vio- 
lation of the act, to be sent as a vagrant from 
" constable to constable " out of the colony. 

The Connecticut churches had changed very 
much since the time of Hooker, but not enough 
to make it likely that such legislation as this 
would pass unchallenged. Churches all over the 
colony became divided within themselves ; the 
" new lights," as the maintainers of freedom for 
the new methods were called, were hurried by zeal 
into the most fantastic doctrines and practices ; 
and the colonial ecclesiastical system was again 
all at sea. One church chose a minister, ordained 
him, quarreled with him, silenced him, cast him 
out of the church, and delivered him up to Satan, 
and all within the space of a year. The extrav- 
agance of the new lights afforded the " old lights " 
a fair opportunity of proceeding to extremes with 
a good grace. General court and assembly joined 
in arresting, excommunicating, and prosecuting 



234 CONNECTICUT. 

ministers who violated the act and church-mem- 
bers who went to hear them. When Whitefield 
made a second tour through the colony in 1745, 
the general court even denounced him by resolu- 
tion as a promoter of errors and disorders, and 
cautioned the ministers not to admit him to their 
pulpits, and church-members not to listen to him. 
Before 1748, the different consociations had ex- 
pelled about all the " new lights " among their 
ministers, one of the consociations remarking com- 
placently in one case that it had now blown out 
one new light, and that it meant to keep on until 
it had blown out all the rest. 

Meanwhile separations among the churches had 
gone on apace. When a minister was disbarred 
by any of the consociations, that portion of his 
flock which agreed or sympathized with him left 
their church with him, and organized a church of 
their own. When a schism arose in a church from 
any cause, it was not long before it ran into some 
phase of the old and new light controversy, and a 
separation took place. There were thus a number 
of separate churches in the colony, and their posi- 
tion was peculiar. From its foundation, the law 
of the colony had been that any man who should 
refuse to contribute according to his ability to the 
support of the settled ministers should be com- 
pelled to do so by levy and distraint, as in the case 
of other taxes. At the same time, provision was 
made, and in 1669 and 1708, as has been said, was 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 235 

enacted into statute, that members of unestab- 
lished churches might " have allowance of their 
persuasion and profession in church ways or assem- 
blies without disturbance." This, however, was 
intended to secure quiet to licensed dissenting 
churches, and to enable members of new Con- 
gregational churches, when licensed by the gen- 
eral court, to transfer their share of the taxes to 
their own ministers. Unlicensed Congregational 
churches were worse off than either, for they were 
taxed for the support of the Established churches, 
and were open to prosecution besides. 

This arrangement had worked very fairly for 
some sixty years. When a separation took place, 
as in Hartford, it was ratified by the general 
court, and the members of the new church paid 
their rates only for the support of their own min- 
ister. No one was legally a minister unless rec- 
ognized by the general court, and then he was en- 
titled to a measure of state support. About 1706 
the ecclesiastical calm had been interrupted by 
the Church of England. One of its missionaries 
began to preach in Stratford, and in 1722 another 
was permanently settled there. It was but natu- 
ral that the members of this church should object 
to supporting their own minister and paying rates 
for the Congregational minister as well ; and they 
had a strong disposition to appeal from the laws 
of Connecticut to those of Great Britain, which 
was the last thing the colony wanted. It is a 



236 CONN EC TICUT. 

tradition that the establishment of the Episcopal 
Church in New Haven was secured by an offer to 
pay the fines for dissidence, coupled with a de- 
mand for a copy of the proceedings for transmis- 
sion to the home government. In 1727 the gen- 
eral court passed an act which cut the tie that 
had so long bound town and church together. 
Hitherto there had been but one church in a 
town, unless the general court permitted a sepa- 
ration. Now any society of the Church of Eng- 
land might be formed in a town; its members 
were thereupon excused from paying rates to the 
settled or Congregational minister ; their obliga- 
tion to pay taxes was transferred to their own 
minister ; and the old church was to be known as 
the " prime ancient society." The latter, however, 
still retained the taxing power over all persons 
not members of any church. In 1729 the act of 
1727 was extended to cover the case of Quakers 
and Baptists. 

The new churches formed by the new-light 
schism claimed to be Congregational: the tyran- 
nical legislation of 1742 had taken them out of 
the scope of the act of 1669, and their members 
were still held bound for taxes to support the very 
ministers from whom they had seceded. Some 
congregations became nominal Baptists in order 
to get the benefit of the act of 1729. Others 
simply refused to pay, and the settled ministers 
put every engine of the law in motion against 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 237 

them. Their property was levied upon and sold 
for a small fraction of its real value ; in default 
of satisfaction by property, they were arrested 
and taken to jail, with the scandalous accompani- 
ment of the scenes naturally arising from a vio- 
lent resistance ; and a faint flavor of the Inquisi- 
tion began to pervade the ecclesiastical system of 
the colony. When the cause of the new lights 
took this form, the end was not far distant. One 
church after another, on the occasion of almost 
any dispute with its minister, took the opportu- 
nity to repudiate the Saybrook platform, and to 
reassert the primitive freedom of the churches ; 
the number of malcontents was steadily increas- 
ing ; and about 1780 the general court gave up 
the struggle and the Saybrook platform together. 
In 1791 it practically granted the right of free in- 
corporation to all religious bodies ; but persons 
unconnected with any church were still required 
to pay rates to the established Congregational or- 
ganization until the constitution of 1818 made all 
such contributions voluntary. 

In spite of the act of 1727, other sects than the 
Congregational were really exotics. It was not 
until 1789 that the first Methodist society was 
founded at Stratford, where the Episcopalians had 
begun their organization. The Baptists and other 
sects had existed in small numbers ; but all the 
sects were weak, and membership in them was to 
some extent a removal from the sympathies of the 



238 CONNECTICUT. 

mass of the people. To the Episcopalians, whose 
church had lorded it at home as the Congrega- 
tional church now lorded it in Connecticut, this 
state of affairs must have been particularly exas- 
perating. Their feeling of isolation was increased 
by the difficulty which they experienced in obtain- 
ing a bishop. It was not until 1784 that Bishop 
Seabury was consecrated by the Scottish bishops, 
having failed of ordination at the hands of the 
English bishops, on account of the necessity that 
the candidate should take the oath of allegiance 
to the crown. 

For one reason or other, every dissenting sect 
in Connecticut had its own grievances, and felt 
itself to be more or less an alien to the common- 
wealth. This worst political feature of any ec- 
clesiastical restriction showed itself again and 
again in local politics before the Revolution, still 
more during the Revolution in the development 
of the Tory party in the State ; and it was the ba- 
sis of almost all party opposition after the Revo- 
lution, until, coalescing with the rising tide of de- 
mocracy, it overthrew the charter itself in 1818. 

The establishment of Yale College, as it was 
an essential part of the colony's ecclesiastical sys- 
tem, may best find a place here. The Connecti- 
cut general court, in establishing a free-school sys- 
tem in 1644, had done so on the express ground 
that it was " one chief project of that old deluder, 
Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 239 

Scriptures ; " and the selectmen of the towns 
were cautioned, as a fundamental part of educa- 
tion, to see to it that parents and masters gave 
children weekly instruction in " some short ortho- 
dox catechism." A college was evidently needed 
as the capstone to the system ; and New Haven, 
under the impulse of Davenport, began thinking 
of such an institution in 1641. It was allowed to 
slumber because of the protest of the leading men 
of the Bay : they urged that all the resources of 
all New England were barely enough to support 
Harvard, and that an attempt to establish a new 
institution would merely ruin both. In 1652 the 
project was formally given up for the time, but 
the New Haven authorities had been directed, 
five years before, to reserve one of the home lots 
for the college. 

When the time seemed to have come, in 1698, 
for reviving the project, the general synod of the 
colony took the work in hand, intending to call 
the new college " The School of the Church." 
During the following year, the notion of church 
control was given up; but ten ministers were 
named as trustees. Their first meeting probably 
took place in the year 1700 ; and it was later in 
the same year that the famous meeting took place 
at Branford, when each minister laid upon the 
trustees' table his contribution of books, saying, 
" I give these books for the founding of a college 
in this colony." The whole number was about 



240 CONNECTICUT. 

forty volumes : so small was the germ from which 
has sprung one of the great institutions of learn- 
ing of the United States. 

In October, 1701, the general court chartered 
the college, in order to enable it to hold lands and 
receive gifts and bequests ; and an annual grant 
amounting to about £60 sterling was voted to aid 
in its support. The trustees fixed upon Saybrook 
as the place for the college, and Abraham Pierson 
as its first rector. But Mr. Pierson was settled 
as minister at Killingworth, and his people would 
not consent to his removal. Until his death, the 
library and students remained at Killingworth ; 
but the Commencements took place at Saybrook. 
The first of them was on the 13th of September, 
1702, when Nathanael Chauncey, the first grad- 
uate, took his degree. Degrees, apparently hon- 
orary, were given at the same time to four others 
who had already been graduated at Harvard. It 
is a pleasing circumstance to record that a large 
part of the instruction of the early classes had 
been given by the trustees, in default of other in- 
structors. 

Mr. Pierson died in 1707, and Mr. Andrew was 
chosen in his place. Part of the students went to 
his residence at Milford, and the rest to Saybrook"; 
and the college was thus divided until 1716. 
When the trustees met at the Commencement of 
1716, they found the college almost broken up. 
Divided instruction and government, aided by the 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 241 

eager struggles of other towns to obtain the final 
location of the college, and crowned by an out- 
break of smallpox, had scattered the students in 
every direction, and there were the germs of half 
a dozen possible colleges. In October the trus- 
tees voted to fix the college at New Haven, and 
persisted in spite of an opposition which divided 
the whole colony and was carried into colonial 
politics. In 1717 the general court endorsed the 
removal, and voted a grant to aid in the erection 
of buildings. All through these years, good friends 
in England had been sending over books, the 
foundation of the noble library which is now so 
great an ornament to the college. One of these 
benefactors was Elihu Yale, a man of New Haven 
ancestry, who had gone into the East India trade 
and become a " nabob." , He had shown a strong 
interest in the college ; and it would probably be 
doing the excellent trustees no injustice if one 
presumes them to have thought that his interest 
would be increased if the institution were removed 
to New Haven and named after him. At any 
rate, the first Commencement held at New Haven, 
in 1718, was marked by the adoption of the title 
Yale College, with a dedicatory memorial to 
Mr. Yale. Yale started in the race long after 
her rival at Cambridge ; and it is interesting to 
speculate on the results of the equality which she 
would have attained at the beginning, if Mr. Yale 
had been able to carry out the generous intentions 

16 



242 CONNECTICUT. 

which he certainly felt for the college which bore 
his name. Unfortunately, he died intestate before 
he could do what he meant to do ; and the college 
received no more aid from him. Never was human 
distinction so cheaply purchased as that which has 
perpetuated the otherwise almost unknown names 
of John Harvard and Elihu Yale. 

If a college were a living thing, one might fancy 
Yale drawing a long breath of satisfaction as it 
struck its roots deep into its new soil. It had 
found its proper place : New Haven would not be 
New Haven without the college, nor would Yale 
be quite Yale without New Haven. But its 
troubles were by no means over. The dissatisfac- 
tion at the removal would not down : there was 
an irregular Commencement in progress at Weth- 
ersfield while the college was receiving its new 
name ; and an attempt by the sheriff to remove 
the library from Saybrook led to a riot, in which 
many of the books were lost. These difficulties 
were healed by the prudence of the general court, 
and Timothy Cutler, of Stratford, was chosen rec- 
tor in Mr. Andrew's place. He proved to be a 
most efficient and popular head ; but in 1722 the 
good people of the colony were astounded to learn 
that the new rector, one of the tutors, and two 
neighboring ministers, had embraced Episcopacy, 
and were going to England to be ordained. They 
carried out their intention, and became the fathers 
of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut. But they 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 243 

left the college in distress ; and it was not until 
1725 that a successor to Mr. Cutler was found, in 
the person of Rev. Elisha Williams. Under his 
rectorship Yale at last began to prosper. Berke- 
ley, subsequently Bishop of Cloyne, made his visit 
to America, and recognized Yale's claims to a 
leading educational place by gifts which were, for 
the time, very munificent ; and Mr. Williams at 
his resignation in 1739 left the college firmly es- 
tablished. 

His successor, Rev. Thomas Clap, of Windham, 
was the first in the long line of distinctively Yale 
presidents. His predecessors had been Connecti- 
cut ministers, set for a time over a special work. 
He sank everything else in his presidency. He 
introduced the modern systems of cataloguing the 
library ; he formulated the laws and customs of 
the college ; and in 1745 he obtained a new char- 
ter for " The President and Fellows of Yale Col- 
lege." The day of the ** collegiate school " had 
gone by, and the real Yale College had fairly be- 
gun its career. In 1750-52 the general court 
aided in erecting Connecticut Hall, and allowed 
President Clap to hold a lottery to complete the 
work. In 1755, when disputes connected in one 
way or other with the new-light controversy were 
distracting the Connecticut churches, President 
Clap showed his executive ability and promptness 
by establishing Yale as a separate church, thus 
removing it from the scene of active strife ; and 



244 CONNECTICUT. 

further, in order to avoid any conflict over the 
matter, he very shrewdly refused to ask the gen- 
eral court for permission, claiming the right, as an 
incorporated college, to do so. The opposition to 
the college seized this opportunity to attack it 
before the general court, on the ground that it was 
" too independent ; " but President Clap appeared 
as its attorney, and defended it successfully. He 
seems to have been one of those college presidents 
who, endowed by nature with abilities sufficient 
for eminence in any department, have devoted 
them all to the development of the college. 

The college preacher who had been called in 
1755, Rev. Naphtali Daggett, retained his posi- 
tion until his death in 1780, having acted as pres- 
ident for a time on the death of Mr. Clap in 1767. 
During his professorship in 1779, the British made 
their attack on New Haven. Among the hasty 
levies which went out to oppose them was the 
stout old college preacher, armed with his shot- 
gun. When the others took to their heels, he 
stood his ground, loading and firing in the most 
unministerial fashion. A British detachment 
charged him and captured him ; and the officer in 
command inquired, not very gently, " What are 
you doing here, you old fool, firing on his majes- 
ty's troops ? " " Exercising the rights of war," 
said the doctor, grimly. He was to be exercised 
in the rights of war in a different way. In his 
own words, " They damned me, those who took 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 245 

me, because they spared my life. Thus, 'midst a 
thousand insults, my infernal driver hastened me 
along farther than my strength would admit in 
the extreme heat of the day, weakened as I was 
by my wounds and the loss of blood, which, at a 
moderate computation, could not be less than a 
quart. And when I failed in some degree through 
faintness, he would strike me on the back with a 
heavy walking-staff, and kick me behind with his 
foot. At length, by the supporting power of God, 
I arrived at the green in New Haven. ... I ob- 
tained leave of an officer to be carried into the 
Widow Lyman's and laid on a bed, where I lay 
the rest of the day and the succeeding night, in 
such acute and excruciating pain as I never felt 
before." 

President Ezra Stiles, called in 1777, was a 
worthy successor to President Clap. He was suc- 
ceeded by Timothy Dwight in 1795, by Jeremiah 
Day in 1817, by Theodore D. Woolsey in 1846, 
by Noah Porter in 1871, and by Timothy Dwight 
in 1886. Modern Yale began under President 
Dwight, in 1795. Able as preceding presidents 
had been, he was the first who reached a really 
national reputation. At the same time the rising 
opposition to Yale control in the State reacted by 
intensifying its support, so that it was for the 
time the ruling power. John Wood, in 1802, thus 
describes the political structure of Connecticut, 
from a democratic standpoint : " This State has 



246 CONNECTICUT. 

not formed any constitution since the Revolution ; 
but ancient superstition and the prejudice of cus- 
tom have established an hierarchy, which is di- 
rected by a sovereign pontiff, twelve cardinals, a 
civil council of nine, and about four hundred pa- 
rochial bishops. The present priest, who may be 
honored with the appellation of pope, is Timothy 
D wight, President of Yale College. . . . The an- 
nual Commencement at Yale College takes place 
in September, a short time previous to the elec- 
tion of the legislature. At this time, the presi- 
dent is attended by his twelve cardinal members 
of the corporation, the governor, the lieutenant 
governor, and seven other senior members of the 
first legislative house (which compose the lay 
part), and the greatest part of the clergy. On 
this occasion, the governor and other civilians are 
subordinate to the president, and they feel deeply 
impressed with a sense of their subordination, 
knowing that he can kill or make alive at the 
next annual election, — that he emphatically holds 
the keys which command their political damna- 
tion or salvation. The pope, being thus sur- 
rounded by his cardinals, his civil councils, and 
his parochial bishops, determines the order and 
detail of the ensuing election. Each one returns 
home with a perfect understanding of the part he 
is to act." He then goes on to draw a highly col- 
ored picture of the manner in which the clergy, 
the " parochial bishops," control the elections un- 
der direction of Pope D wight. 



ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 247 

All this was but a deeply prejudiced view of 
the feeling which Connecticut, and particularly 
the clergy, were coming to have toward the col- 
lege. The little State's little college was fast be- 
coming a national institution. Its former meagre 
system, under which instruction was given by the 
president and a few tutors, was giving place to 
the organized staff of professors which now num- 
bers a hundred. From the beginning of this cen- 
tury, Yale's development has not only been strong, 
natural, and healthy : it has also tended steadily 
into university development. The original col- 
lege has been the nucleus around which have been 
clustered successive coordinated departments of 
study. The Medical School was added in 1813; 
the Theological School in 1822 ; the Law School 
in 1824 ; the Sheffield Scientific School in 1847 ; 
the Art School in 1864 ; and the Peabody Mu- 
seum of Natural History in 1866. In 1886 the 
title Yale College was changed to that of Yale 
University. In its sphere, the State's develop- 
ment has been limited by circumstances, while 
that of the college has been free from necessary 
limitations ; naturally, therefore, the devotion of 
the State to the college has not been able to keep 
up the closely paternal relations which John Wood 
found so exasperating in 1802. But the State and 
city cannot but be proud of the institution which 
Davenport conceived, Clap preserved, and D wight 
sent on its way to its present rank as a great uni- 
versity. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 1640-1763. 

A democracy usually finds its vulnerable side 
in financial errors, and any decadence in the qual- 
ity of its individual units is most quickly reflected 
here. Connecticut's success in repairing her own 
blunders is an evidence that there was at least no 
decadence in her colonial history. The common- 
wealth shared with the other New England colo- 
nies the early difficulties arising from want of me- 
tallic currency, or from clumsy attempts to supply 
the want by various attractive but fallacious ex- 
pedients. At first, the little ready money which 
the settlers brought with them served for their 
trade with one another, while the Indian trade 
was carried on by means of Indian money. It 
soon became necessary to use the Indian money, 
wampum, wampum - peage, or simply peage, in 
traffic among the whites ; and it passed current 
at the rate of six pieces, later four pieces, to the 
penny, or a fathom for five shillings. The use 
of this was not uncommon even during the early 
years of the next century. In addition, there were 
all sorts of substitutes for money: beaver-skins, 



FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 249 

codfish, farm products, live stock, bullets, and nails 
served either for small change or for large pay- 
ments. Much of the legislation, in Connecticut 
and in other New England colonies, which has 
been stigmatized as a sort of sumptuary legisla- 
tion, fixing prices for goods, was really intended 
to put a legal value on them so that they might 
serve as currency, either in liquidating private 
debts or in paying taxes. In case of doubt, the 
goods were " prysed," or appraised, by arbitrators 
selected by the two parties. 

" Bay shillings," of the Massachusetts coinage 
of 1652, became current in Connecticut soon after 
their issue, in spite of the efforts of the Bay col- 
ony to keep them at home. But clipping soon 
put them into doubt, and the colonists were 
driven back to primitive substitutes. The jour- 
nal of Mrs. Knight, who passed through Connecti- 
cut in 1704, tells us that there were then in use 
in that colony four distinct sorts of currency. 
" Pay " was barter, property at the prices which 
the general court had affixed to it in acceptance 
for taxes for that year. " Money " was metallic 
currency, or wampum for the token money. " Pay 
as money " was property, at rates fixed by the 
parties, not by the general court. " Trust " was 
a price, with time given. The court records often 
speak of the first as " country pay," not because 
the articles came from the country, as one might 
suppose, but because its rates of value were fixed 



250 CONNECTICUT. 

by the "country," a term often used for the col- 
ony or state, and that in strict accordance with 
good English precedents. Payment " in specie " 
meant payment in articles specified by the agree- 
ment, or, in default of that, in articles at rates 
specified by the general court's acts. It was not 
limited to money until gold and silver were made 
the only legal tender. The " money " used in 
larger payments was mainly Spanish pieces-of- 
eight, that is, of eight reals, afterwards supplanted 
by the Spanish milled dollar, each about equiva- 
lent to six New England shillings ; and the per- 
sistence of this equivalent value of six shillings to 
the federal dollar long afterward is a curious sur- 
vival of ancient values. As all these substitutes 
varied in value or in price, and as the real money 
was generally of somewhat doubtful quality, all 
the difficulties of arithmetic were added to the 
natural difficulties of trade ; and, as always hap- 
pens under such circumstances, the sharpest and 
least scrupulous reaped all the profit, while the 
mass of the people, too busy with other things to 
study the intricacies of finance, paid the piper. 
Not content with this state of affairs, the colony 
was imprudent enough to seek relief in the thorny 
paths of paper money emissions. This part of 
the commonwealth's history is intimately con- 
nected with her wars. 

The first set conflict of Connecticut with the 
Canadian French came after the recovery of the 



FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 251 

charter. The accession of William and Mary to 
the English throne had been followed at once by 
war between England and France, in which the 
colonies were involved without any great desire for 
it. Connecticut's position was peculiar. She was 
shut off from any imminent danger by New York 
and Massachusetts ; and yet she was in a position 
from which she could give quicker and more ef- 
fective aid to the exposed settlements of those 
colonies than their centres of power could render. 
Help from Hartford could reach Albany or the 
towns of western Massachusetts sooner than it 
could be sent from New York or Boston. Con- 
necticut was therefore usually at war in defense 
of her neighbors rather than of herself ; but her 
aid was never given grudgingly or scantily. 

At the first rumor of war, Connecticut had sent 
Captain Bull to Albany with a detachment for 
the defense of that place, and another detachment 
to New York city for a similar purpose. Leisler 
then held New York city, while the Albany dis- 
trict was in a state of incipient rebellion against 
him. Suddenly the French and Indians burst 
into Schenectady, where no sufficient watch was 
kept, massacred the people, and burned the place. 
Bull had warned the people to keep a better 
watch, but to no purpose. Leisler and his oppo- 
nents both charged the calamity upon the false 
security produced by the intrigues and promises 
of the opposite party ; and all the thanks received 



252 CONNECTICUT. 

by Connecticut came in the form of accusations 
by both parties that she had encouraged the ras- 
cals of the opposition. There is a good commen- 
tary on her disinterestedness in the fact that De 
Callieres' plan of campaign contemplated only an 
attack on Albany and New York, with no design 
on Connecticut. 

In conjunction with the other New England 
colonies and New York, Connecticut agreed to 
take part in the land expedition up the Hudson, 
which was to cooperate with Governor Phipps's 
sea expedition against Quebec. Fitz John Win- 
throp was placed in. command of the joint forces, 
with Milborn, Leisler's son-in-law, as commissary. 
Milborn does not seem to have known enough to 
provide food or transportation for the army ; and, 
in default of these very necessary factors of suc- 
cess, Winthrop was compelled to retreat. Leisler 
took the side of his son-in-law, heaped volumes of 
abuse upon Winthrop, and finally ordered him 
under arrest. It is said that the Indians attached 
to the army released him, '• to the universal joy 
of the army." The Connecticut general court ex- 
pressed itself emphatically in his favor, and the 
tone of Leisler's letters is enough to confirm their 
judgment. For the remainder of the war, Con- 
necticut's part was confined to furnishing troops 
whenever any of her neighbors called for them. 

The case was much the same in Queen Anne's 
war, which broke out in 1702, but was aggravated 



FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 253 

by the programme pursued hy Governor Cornbury 
of New York, a cousin of the queen, and Governor 
Dudley of Massachusetts. Dudley's object was 
to unite all the New England colonies under his 
government ; but he was shrewd enough to per- 
suade Cornbury that he meant merely to attach 
Connecticut to New York. So Connecticut was 
kept busy in satisfying the requisitions of her 
neighbor governors for troops and material aid of 
all kinds, while the two governors were all the 
time planning to vacate the charter of Connecticut. 
A bill for that purpose was brought before parlia- 
ment, and was only defeated by the most untiring 
efforts of Ashurst, the colony's agent. Dudley's 
attempt to enforce the Mohegan claims, already 
mentioned, was a part of the scheme. 

Dudley's whole scheme proved abortive in 1705 ; 
and the colony no doubt took great satisfaction, 
when he next sent a request for troops in 1707, in 
returning aflat refusal. Two years after, in 1709, 
on a requisition from the queen for three hundred 
and fifty men to attack Quebec, and for four hun- 
dred more for a land expedition against Montreal, 
Connecticut promptly filled her quota ; and about 
one hundred of her men were among the dead who 
were the principal result of the campaign. The 
next year, three hundred men were raised and 
took part in the capture of Port Royal. In the 
following year, four hundred men were raised to 
give stupid Hovenden Walker the pleasure of 
wrecking them in Canadian waters. 



254 CONNECTICUT. 

Until 1709 the colony had fought through all 
its work on a money basis, raising or lowering the 
tax-rates from time to time as necessity required 
or permitted. Its limit had now been reached. 
The taxes had risen to seven or eight pence in the 
pound, a ruinous rate for a poor and struggling 
agricultural commonwealth, whose own govern- 
mental expenses were kept down to the lowest 
point. In June, 1709, "the great scarcity of 
money, the payment of the public debts and 
charges of this government, especially in the in- 
tended expedition to Canada," led the general 
court to order the issue of X 8,000 in paper cur- 
rency. It was to be received at a premium of five 
per cent, in payment of taxes ; no legal-tender 
clause was inserted, as in other colonies ; and a 
special tax of ten pence in the pound was ordered 
for payment in two annual parts. Further levies 
made it necessary to order the issue of £11,000 
more in the same year, with the provision of a tax 
for payment in six annual parts. From this time 
the issues went on with bewildering rapidity. In 
all cases it speaks well for the underlying good 
sense of the authorities that provision was made 
for special taxation for the redemption of each 
issue ; but the evil consequences of such issues 
could not be altogether avoided. The original 
avoidance of the legal-tender feature lasted until 
1718, and then it was introduced under a bashful 
cover. Debtors who tendered bills of credit were 



FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 255 

relieved from execution and imprisonment. Fur- 
ther, counterfeiting had become alarmingly com- 
mon ; and the general court had come to rely more 
and more, in every emergency, on fresh emissions 
of bills of credit. And in 1733 the once cautious 
colony had become so demoralized as to establish 
what was really a land-bank, issuing £30,000 in 
bills, and dividing the amount in loans equally 
among the five counties. In spite of continuous 
efforts to provide in advance by taxation for the 
redemption of each issue, the balance against the 
colony was growing larger ; the purchasing power 
of the paper was depreciating ; and, though this 
effect was disguised from most people by the legal- 
tender feature, yet there was not a man in the col- 
ony who could not appreciate it, as it came in the 
rise of prices of commodities : silver rose in price 
from 8s. per ounce in 1708 to 18s. in 1732, and to 
32s. in 1744. As usual, the price of labor lagged 
behind in the rise, while the price of all that the 
laborer ate or wore was rising faster, so that the 
laborer paid the cost of most of the factitious in- 
crease of business. The authorities themselves be- 
came careless, so that, for the first time in its his- 
tory, the accounts of the colony became so puzzling 
during this period that it is practically impossible 
to make anything out of them. The best that can 
be made of them is that, down to 1740, <£ 156,000 
of paper had been issued, but that all but about 
X 6,000 of this had been redeemed by taxation; 



256 CONNECTICUT. 

and that there were still outstanding about <£ 33,000 
issued and loaned to the various counties, making 
about .£39,000 in all for which the colony was 
now responsible. 

From the time of Walker's luckless expedition 
there was peace in the colony for nearly thirty 
years, such peace as the colonists might have had 
nearly always but for the fact of the existence 
of a " home government." In 1739 this " home 
government" saw fit to declare a war against 
Spain, which swept France into its circle in 1744, 
and was only ended by the peace of Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle in 1748. It was only when the French took 
part in it that the more northern colonies became 
fully involved : until then, Oglethorpe and the 
new colony of Georgia bore the brunt of the con- 
flict. But the northern colonies did not altogether 
escape : the home government had prepared an 
entertainment for them, in Admiral Vernon's Car- 
thagena expedition, more elaborate than Walker's 
and almost as unlucky. Connecticut contributed 
her proportion of the men, one thousand in num- 
ber, whom New England sent to Carthagena, of 
whom hardly a hundred returned ; and the ex- 
penses of the armament called for a further issue 
of £45,000 in paper, £8,000 to be applied to the 
redemption of former issues, or " old tenor," and 
£23,000 to be loaned out, and the interest applied 
to redemption purposes. This issue was called 
" new tenor." In obedience to a demand of the 



FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 257 

board of trade, the legal-tender provision was 
struck out. The extension of the war to France 
in 1744, and the brilliant and successful expedition 
against Louisburg, brought fresh expense, which 
Connecticut met by fresh issues of " new tenor," 
bringing her whole emissions for the war up to the 
enormous sum of £ 131,000, on a tax valuation of 
a little more than £900,000 in 1743. These bills 
soon began to depreciate in their turn, but never 
fell quite so low as those of the old tenor ; at the 
worst, one of the former was equal to three and a 
half of the latter. Steadily enforced taxation, and 
the receipt of some <£ 29,000 in coin, which was 
the colony's share of the parliamentary grant in 
reimbursement of the expenses, were sufficient to 
wipe out the outstanding paper, which had 
amounted in 1751 to about £ 340,000, reckoning 
both old and new tenor in old tenor, as was cus- 
tomary. By 1756 the colony had pretty nearly 
got rid of her paper. This consummation had 
been helped by an act of parliament in 1751, for- 
bidding the issue of legal-tender paper and of paper 
currency of any kind, unless limited to the taxes 
of the current year, or secured by taxes payable 
within five years. It was also helped by the more 
uncomfortable fact that the colony took advantage 
of the depreciation of her own paper to redeem it 
at about eleven per cent, of its face value. 

Connecticut's experience with the treacherous 
expedient of paper currency had not been sufficient 

17 



258 CONNECTICUT. 

to guard her against all future resorts to it, but it 
was sufficient to save her from its worst phases for 
all time to come. In June, 1704, Queen Anne had 
issued her proclamation, stating a table of values 
for the various foreign coins then current in Great 
Britain and the colonies. Such money, at the 
English equivalents there named, now got the popu- 
lar name of " proclamation money," or " lawful 
money," the state of affairs being what would now 
be called a resumption of specie payments. Dur- 
ing the paper flood, the proclamation had been 
little regarded, but it now came into operation. 
When the French and Indian war broke out, Con- 
necticut at once met its initial expenses by the 
issue of paper payable within three years in " law- 
ful money," with interest at five per cent., and 
without any legal-tender clause ; and this policy 
was followed steadily through the war. In all 
cases, a tax was laid to redeem each emission ; the 
paper, being of varying value according to the 
amount of accrued interest, circulated very little as 
currency ; and there was little depreciation or con- 
fusion. The whole amount issued was £359,000, 
and it all seems to have been paid at maturity or 
before. 

Connecticut took her full part in the warlike 
operations for which all these issues were intended. 
She had sent eleven hundred of her sons, and a 
sloop of war of her own, on the expedition to 
Louisburg in 1745, when the colonies, abandoning 



FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 259 

all reliance on the shiftless home government, sur- 
prised it and themselves by taking a fortress which, 
by all military rules, should have been impregnable. 
Her part in the French and Indian war has been 
somewhat obscured by her strenuous opposition to 
the plan of union devised at Albany in 1754, at 
Franklin's suggestion, as if she had been an ob- 
stacle to the efficient prosecution of the war. The 
plan proposed a general government of the colonies 
by a president-general and a grand council ; and 
one secret of Connecticut's opposition to it seems 
to have been its provision that all nominations of 
commissioned officers, by land and sea, should be 
by this central government. From the time of 
Andros down, every attack on the charter of Con- 
necticut, either by the crown or by neighbor col- 
onies, had come in the form of an attempt to get 
control of the colony's militia ; and the colony 
had come in her tarn to have an almost fanatical 
determination to commission her own officers. It 
was this, rather than any unreasonable democracy, 
which led her into opposition to the plan which 
always seemed to Franklin the fairest that could 
have been devised for both parties. 

At the beginning of the war, Connecticut was 
called upon for one thousand men as her share of 
the army which was to win the battle of Lake 
George. The contingent of the much larger colony 
of Massachusetts was but a trifle larger ; but Con- 
necticut not only met the call at once, but author- 



260 CONNECTICUT. 

ized the governor to raise five hundred more, if 
they should be needed. Her senior officer, Phineas 
Lyman, was second in command of the army, of 
which William Johnson, of New York, was com- 
mander in chief. The fortune of the two halves 
of the battle was similar in one respect. Major 
Williams, of Massachusetts, who commanded the 
routed advance party, was killed almost at the first 
fire ; and it was Nathan Whiting, a New Haven 
officer, who rallied the men and managed the re- 
treat to the main body. Johnson, having been 
wounded enough to justify him in retiring, left 
the field at the beginning of the main action ; and 
it was Lyman, of Connecticut, who for five long 
hours carried on the fiercest conflict then on record 
in colonial history, in which almost the entire 
French regular force was put out of existence. 
The real victor did not have even the satisfaction 
of seeing his name misspelled in the " Gazette." 
Johnson, according to President Dwight, had the 
ineffable meanness to ignore him altogether in his 
report, and to accept the honor of knighthood for 
the victory which Lyman had won. The histories 
have treated Lyman very much as his superior 
officer did. 

In the unfortunate campaigns of 1756 and 1757, 
Connecticut regularly raised more than twice the 
number of men assigned to her as her quota. 
Her men underwent every vicissitude of the war ; 
and her public men must have had a training in 



FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 261 

democracy such as their fathers had never quite 
enjoyed. In this war, the characteristics of de- 
mocracy and aristocracy were for the first time 
brought directly into contrast on American soil. 
The Connecticut democracy had produced a class 
of men of its own ; all were tested as to their 
ability, advanced as they were competent to serve 
the public, and then kept in office until they were 
ready to retire to a well-won old age. Rotation in 
office and favoritism were equally incomprehensible 
to the Connecticut mind. Now it was brought to 
meet the varying product of the English aristo- 
cratic system: sometimes a gallant soldier, like 
Howe or Wolfe ; sometimes a statesman of genius, 
like Pitt ; more often an imbecile, like Webb or 
Loudoun or " Mrs. Nabbycrombie,' 1 who owed to 
family or court influence a position for which Con- 
necticut would never have paid them more than 
one year's salary. 

Lyman, commissioned as major general, was 
senior officer of the Connecticut troops, and Whit- 
ing his second. Under them were most of the men 
who afterwards became distinguished as the com- 
monwealth's contribution to the defense of Ameri- 
can independence, the most prominent of whom 
was Israel Putnam. A native of Salem, Mass., of 
which his forefather had been one of the first set- 
tlers, he had removed to Pomfret, Conn., in 1739, 
and it was near that place that his adventure with 
the wolf gave him a reputation throughout the col- 



262 CONNECTICUT. 

ony for absolute fearlessness. Entering the war 
as a lieutenant, he came out with the grade of 
lieutenant colonel, having gained his advance, with 
the thanks of the colony's legislature, through a 
succession of wood-ranging adventures which would 
need a volume for the telling. Lyman, however, 
would have led Putnam in revolutionary rank and 
success, but for his unfortunate trust to court 
honor and gratitude. Going to England in 1763, 
to secure a grant of land for the disbanded soldiers, 
he lingered there for eleven years, in all that hope 
deferred which maketh the heart sick ; returned 
in 1774, broken in mind as well as in spirit; and 
died in West Florida the following year. 

The Connecticut troops were in all the cam- 
paigns of 1758 ; they took their share in the awful 
butchery of Ticonderoga, and in the second cap- 
ture of Louisburg. The colony's efforts were so 
exhausting that, when it was called on for 5,000 
men in the following year, it shrank, for the first 
time, from fulfilling it. The general court at first 
resolved that it was impossible to raise more than 
3,600 men, because of the efforts of the past three 
years, and of the numbers of its citizens who had 
enlisted in the royal provincial regiments or among 
the boatmen. On the urgent request of the gov- 
ernor, the number was increased to 4,000; and 
another session, two months later, finally raised 
this to 5,000, the number first called for. The 
encouragement afforded by the capture of Quebec 



FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 263 

made it easier to renew this effort the next year ; 
and in 1761 it was called on for but two thirds the 
usual number. In 1762 the colony was called on 
for 1,000 men for the expedition to Havana. Ly- 
man had command of all the provincial forces, 
2,500 in all ; and Putnam was now in command of 
Lyman's own regiment. In this, as in the expedi- 
tion against Carthagena, there was a great deal of 
what was then known as " glory : " wounds, disease, 
and death for the many ; booty, pleasure, and rep- 
utation for the few. Only a handful of the men 
who left Connecticut for the expedition ever re- 
turned ; and this one event probably deprived the 
colony of the services of many an officer whose ex- 
perience would have been invaluable twelve years 
later. 

With the close of the French and Indian war, 
Connecticut was brought at last into close practi- 
cal relations with her sister colonies : the union 
which she had rejected, through a somewhat ex- 
treme provincialism, in 1754, had been forced on 
her by circumstances, although it had not been put 
on paper, or definitely expressed in its terms ; for 
that, a more severe exigency was necessary. But 
the pressure of well-understood common necessi- 
ties had taught her people the duty of unselfish ex- 
ertion for the common defense. She was now pre- 
pared, as she had never been prepared before, to 
take her place as a coordinated commonwealth in 
an American union. Before turning to the process 



264 CONNECTICUT. 

by which this was accomplished, it is proper to 
notice the steps by which the colony, which was 
to extend from Narragansett Bay to the Pacific 
Ocean, was restricted to the limits with which she 
entered the Union under the Constitution. 



CHAPTER XV. 

COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. — WYOMING 
AND THE WESTERN RESERVE. 

The century following the grant and establish- 
ment of the charter was a period of quiet but al- 
most uninterrupted growth for Connecticut. Com- 
paratively undisturbed by wars or by the inter- 
ference of the home government, with no royal 
agent within her borders to frame indictments 
against her policy and methods, and to press them 
upon the king's attention, she went steadily on 
her way to that which her people wanted most, — 
the undisturbed power of gaining a livelihood and 
of worshiping God under democratic government. 
Her charter had secured to them most of these 
objects ; the obstacle to the attainment of the 
rest was the unkindly nature of her soil. 

In 1680 the colonial government sent, in answer 
to a request of the board of trade for detailed in- 
formation, a statement of the colony's condition . 
Its quaint and sometimes apparently guarded lan- 
guage carries in it many indications of the almost 
hopeless weakness of the colony, and of the stout 
hearts of the men who were maintaining it. The 



266 CONNECTICUT. 

draft of the letter is from the hand of John Allyn. 
He estimates the fighting men, or " trained bands," 
of the colony, at 2,507, which might imply a pop- 
ulation of between ten and twelve thousand, or 
about three persons to the square mile, — about 
half the proportion of Nebraska in 1880. The peo- 
ple had " little traffique abroad," and the bulk of 
their trade was in " sending what provissions we 
rays to Boston, where we buy goods with it, to 
cloath vs." The country was mountainous, full of 
rocks, swamps, hills and vales ; most that was fit 
for planting had been taken up ; " what remaynes 
must be subdued, and gained out of the fire as it 
were, by hard blowes and for smal recompence." 
The principal towns were Hartford, New London, 
New Haven, and Fairfield, with twenty-six smaller 
towns, in one of which " we have two churches." 
The buildings, however, were not so bad, " for a 
wilderness ; " they were of wood, stone, and brick, 
many of them, says Allyn with pardonable pride, 
" 40 foot long and 20 foot broad, and some larger : 
three and four stories high." On second thoughts, 
Allyn struck out these latter specifications, perhaps 
fearing that such a picture of opulence might excite 
the greed of the home government. The exports 
were farm products, boards, staves, and horses, 
mainly sent to Boston, but some small quanti- 
ties to the West Indies, there to be bartered " for 
suger, cotton wool and rumme, and some money.'' 
Tobacco was grown for home consumption. There 



COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 267 

were but twenty merchants in the colony, and 
few of these had a foreign trade. There were 
very few servants, and only about thirty slaves, 
imported from Barbadoes at <£22 each. The 
largest ship of the colony was one of ninety tons •, 
twenty-eight others ranged from eight to eighty 
tons. Labor was scarce and dear ; wages were 2s. 
and 2s. 6d. a day ; and provisions were cheap, 
so that there was little necessity for poor relief. 
Beggars and vagabonds " were not suffered," but, 
when discovered, were bound out to service. 
There were no duties imposed by the colony on 
exports, and only a duty on imported wines, to be 
used as a school fund. The property of the col- 
ony was estimated for taxing purposes at about 
.£110,000. But, in all such estimates, it should 
be remembered that about two fifths of it was 
more in the nature of a poll-tax, the tax being in- 
creased according to a somewhat arbitrary sched- 
ule of supposed wealth or position in the various 
trades and professions, so that it took the place, 
in part, of an income tax as well. 

In spite of the poverty of the colony, its vitality 
was shown by the steady increase in the number 
of its towns. Allyn gives their number as twenty- 
six in 1680. Six of these, Lyme, Hacldam, Sims- 
bury, Wallingford, Derby, and Woodbury, had 
been incorporated since the union of the two col- 
onies ; and three more, Waterbury, Glastenbury, 
and Plainfield, were to become towns before the 



268 CONNECTICUT. 

end of the century. In the development of these 
new towns there were two distinct processes, ac- 
cording to the nature of the case. A speculator 
or a company might buy lands from the Indians, 
with the approval of the general court, in some lo- 
cality outside of the bounds of any town. As soon 
as the rates became sufficiently large to need the 
extension of the general court's taxing power over 
the little community, a committee was appointed 
by that body to bound out the town : it was then 
expected to choose constables, and send delegates 
to the general court. The other process contin- 
ually tended to become the only one. A town, 
when first established, usually had extensive boun- 
daries. Those persons who settled in the outflying 
districts of the township found it more and more 
troublesome, particularly in winter, to resort to 
the old church for preaching. When there were 
enough of such dissatisfied persons to support a 
minister of their own, they applied to the general 
court for permission to form a church. For the 
church was really a territorial term, quite as much 
so as the township ; and the setting off of a new 
church meant the diminution of the area of the old 
church, and the inclusion of all persons within the 
new bounds in the new church. As this involved 
a diminution of the resources of the old church, it 
regularly met with strong opposition, and was 
only successful after several petitions. The erec- 
tion into a town followed at the discretion of the 



COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 269 

general court. Plainfield may be taken as a com- 
bination of the two processes. Originally settled 
as " Quinnabaug plantation," it was important 
enough in 1700 to become a town. The general 
court therefore incorporated it, named it Plain- 
field, and gave it, as was an essential step, a spe- 
cial brand for its horses, in this case a triangle» 
In May, 1703, some discension having arisen, the 
court ordered the territory to be divided into two 
parts, the western settlers to pay their rates for the 
support of the eastern minister until they had " an 
approved minister " of their own. Their choice 
having been approved, the general court proceeded 
in October to constitute the people of the western 
half of Plainfield a distinct town, under the name 
of Canterbury, with a horse brand of its own. 

The charter seems to have contemplated a gen- 
eral meeting of the governor, lieutenant governor, 
assistants, and deputies as the general assembly, 
still often called the general court ; and this was 
the form which its meetings at first took. In 
1678 the court ordered that the governor, lieuten- 
ant governor, and assistants should be a council to 
act for the commonwealth during the recesses of 
the court. This was the prelude to the inevitable 
introduction of a bi-cameral system. In 1698 the 
general court ordered that the council should sit 
as a separate house, and the deputies as the other, 
and that laws should be passed only by the assent 
of both houses ; and the arrangement went into 



270 CONNECTICUT. 

force the next year. This change was followed 
by the adoption of a doable capital. Among the 
first measures of conciliation proposed by Connec- 
ticut to induce New Haven to accept the charter 
was that New Haven should be made a coordinate 
capital of the commonwealth, as well as county 
town of a distinct county. New Haven's rejection 
of the terms caused the former proposition to 
lapse for the time ; but it was put into force in 
1701. It was decided that the May session of the 
general court should be held hereafter at Hart- 
ford, and the October session at New Haven. 
This arrangement lasted until 1873, when Hart- 
ford was again made sole capital. 

The long period of peace and comparative pros- 
perity during the first half of the last century was 
prolific in new towns. From 1700 until 1745 
thirty of them were incorporated, very nearly as 
many as were in existence in 1700. There was 
an equally steady growth in population, though 
all the figures for it must be mere estimates. It 
is estimated by Bancroft at 17,000 for the year 
1688, and by Trumbull at the same figures for 
1713. In 1755 the board of trade estimated it 
at 100,000 ; and Bancroft at 133,000, with 3,500 
slaves. It is not possible to get nearer to the 
truth ; but the constantly increasing quotas of 
Connecticut to New England armies during the 
years between 1690 and 1763 are enough to show 
the growing population of the colony. At the 



COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 271 

date last named, a comparison of Bancroft's esti- 
mate for Connecticut with that for Massachusetts 
(207,000), and for whites in Virginia (168,000), 
will show that the seed planted on the banks of 
the Connecticut had grown into one of the stateli- 
est trees on the continent. It had grown so large 
as to feel the cramping influence of its surround- 
ings. 

In 1762 all the soil of the colony had been al- 
lotted to townships, and new towns formed after 
that year were carved out of townships already 
in existence. Long before that time, population 
had begun to show a disposition to swarm. The 
first effort in this direction was due to the boun- 
dary settlement of 1713-14 between Connecticut 
and Massachusetts. In consideration of certain 
concessions in straightening the line, Massachu- 
setts gave Connecticut a parcel of her western 
lands. Some of these (60,000 acres, according to 
the New York attorney general's report in 1752), 
though then believed to be in Massachusetts, were 
really in the district to be known as Vermont. 
These lands were sold by Connecticut to private 
parties, and their purchases drew off the atten- 
tion of a considerable number of her people to 
this territory. The erection of Fort Dummer in 
1729 offered some promise of protection to set- 
tlers, and those who had long owned these wild 
lands began to think of settling upon them. At 
first, a few young men were sent thither in the 



272 CONNECTICUT. 

summer to work the land, returning home for the 
winter. New York claimed jurisdiction over the 
whole territory, under the iniquitous grant to 
the duke, which had been extended up to the Con- 
necticut River in defiance of the Massachusetts 
and Connecticut charters. So far as these two 
colonies were concerned, the claim had been given 
up ; but New York still maintained it against 
New Hampshire. Governor Wentworth, of New 
Hampshire, insisted that the limits of his colony 
extended as far west as the two colonies to the 
south, though it is not easy to see on what ground. 
He proceeded to make grants of land in the dis- 
puted territory, very many of them to Connecti- 
cut settlers. He cared for little except the pro- 
ceeds of the sales, and left civil organization to 
the settlers. The result was that the Connecti- 
cut town system was again transferred to a wil- 
derness, there to begin a struggle with the central- 
ized system of New York. The Vermont towns 
were even more independent than their proto- 
types ; and their " independence and unbridled 
democracy" formed one of the. arguments by 
which New York obtained a judgment in her fa- 
vor from the home government. Connecticut 
blood and town and personal names were strongly 
represented in the " Hampshire Grants ; " indeed, 
some of the towns in the grants held their first 
town meeting in Connecticut before the removal 
of their settlers. Ethan and Ira Allen, Warner, 



COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 273 

the Chipmans, Chittenden, and a host of other 
Connecticut men, took a leading place among those 
who resisted the authorities of New York, with, 
perhaps, a touch of hereditary bitterness ; and 
when the territory erected itself into a State in 
1777, it assumed the significant title of " New 
Connecticut," the more appropriate name of Ver- 
mont being substituted in the course of the year. 
The details of the struggle are not within our 
province. It need only be said that the New 
York authorities seem to have found most embar- 
rassment in dealing with the new and vigorous 
form of local government which had become es- 
tablished in the territory, and that the final 
establishment of the State of Vermont may fairly 
be claimed as another success of the Connecticut 
town system. 

Here dropping this extra-legal effort at com- 
monwealth expansion, we come to the strictly le- 
gal attempt to enforce the charter boundaries, and 
its failure. The effort evidently arose from an 
instinctive perception that the practical bounds 
of the commonwealth would seriously cramp its 
growth, and reduce its rank among the States, as 
they have since done. The charter bounds ex- 
tended west to the Pacific Ocean : this would 
have carried Connecticut over a strip covering the 
northern two fifths of the present State of Penn- 
sylvania. Stuart faithlessness interfered with this 
doubly. Almost immediately after the grant of 

18 



274 CONNECTICUT. 

the charter, Charles granted to his brother James 
the Dutch colony of New Netherland, thus inter- 
rupting the continuity of Connecticut. Rather 
than resist the king's brother, Connecticut agreed 
and ratified the interruption. In 1681 a more 
serious interference took place. Charles granted 
to Penn the province of Pennsylvania, extending 
westward five degrees between the 40th and 43d 
parallels of north latitude. The width of the 
province would have been from the northern out- 
skirts of Philadelphia to about the present city of 
Utica in New York, thus taking in five degrees of 
Connecticut's grant, and all western New York 
except the lake-shore. Geographical knowledge 
was not very profound ; and Penn seems to have 
founded his capital city before discovering that he 
had unluckily placed it too far to the south, out- 
side of his own province and in the Baltimore 
grant. What was to be done ? The solution of 
the difficulty deserves more credit for its ingenuity 
than for its ingenuousness, and Bancroft absolves 
Penn from responsibility for it. The language of 
his grant was from "the beginning of the 40th 
parallel " to " the beginning of the 43d." What 
was " the beginning of the 40th parallel " ? Evi- 
dently, said the Pennsylvania argument, the 39th. 
And " the beginning of the 43d " ? As clearly, 
the 42d. Ergo, Pennsylvania extended south 
from its present northern boundary to Annapolis, 
taking in the city of Baltimore on the way. The 



COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 275 

war having thus been carried into Africa, the of- 
fer was made to compromise with the Baltimore 
family on the present boundaries, from about 
latitude 39° 45' to latitude 42°, and, after half a 
century's struggle, the compromise was adopted. 
New York was more than satisfied with the ar- 
rangement, as it carried her southern boundary a 
full degree to the south ; and all the parties seem 
to have ignored Connecticut. 

The territory taken from Connecticut by the 
Penn grant would be bounded southerly on the 
present map by a straight line entering Pennsyl- 
vania about Stroudsburg, just north of the Dela- 
ware Water Gap, and running west through Hazel- 
ton, Catawissa, Clearfield, and New Castle, taking 
in all the northern coal, iron, and oil fields. It 
was a royal heritage, but the Penns made no at- 
tempt to settle it, and Connecticut until the middle 
of the eighteenth century had no energy to spare 
from the task of winning her home territory " out 
of the fire, as it were, by hard blows and for small 
recompense." This task had been fairly well done 
by 1750, and in 1753 a movement to colonize in 
the Wyoming country was set on foot in Wind- 
ham county. It spread by degrees until the Sus- 
quehanna Company was formed the next year, 
with nearly 700 members, of whom 638 were of 
Connecticut. Their agents made a treaty with the 
Five Nations July 11, 1754, by which they bought 
for £ 2,000 a tract of land beginning at the forty- 



276 CONNECTICUT. 

first degree of latitude, the southerly boundary of 
Connecticut ; thence running north, following the 
line of the Susquehanna at a distance of ten miles 
from it, to the present northern boundary of 
Pennsylvania ; thence one hundred and twenty 
miles west ; thence south to the forty-first degree 
and back to the point of beginning. In May, 
1755, the Connecticut general assembly expressed 
its acquiescence in the scheme, if the king should 
approve it ; and it approved also a plan of Samuel 
Hazard, of Philadelphia, for another colony, to be 
placed west of Pennsylvania, and within the char- 
tered limits of Connecticut. The court might have 
taken stronger ground than this ; for, at the meet- 
ing of commissioners from the various colonies at 
Albany, in 1754, the representatives of Pennsyl- 
vania being present, no opposition was made to a 
resolution that Connecticut and Massachusetts, 
by charter right, extended west to the South Sea. 
The formation of the Susquehanna Company 
brought out objections from Pennsylvania, but 
the company sent out surveyors and plotted its 
tract. 

Settlement was begun on the Delaware River 
in 1757, and in the Susquehanna purchase in 
1762. This was a temporary settlement, the set- 
tlers going home for the winter. A permanent 
venture was made the next year on the flats be- 
low Wilkes Barre, but it was destroyed by the 
Indians the same year. In 1768 the company 



COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 277 

marked oat five townships, and sent out forty set- 
tlers for the first, Kingston. Most of them, in- 
cluding the famous Captain Zebulon Butler, had 
served in the French and Indian war ; and their 
first step was to build the " Forty Fort." The 
Penns, after their usual policy, had refused to sell 
lands, but had leased plots to a number of men 
on condition of their " defending the lands from 
the Connecticut claimants." The forty Connecti- 
cut men found these in possession when they ar- 
rived in February, 1769, and a war of writs and 
arrests followed for the remainder of the year. 
The Pennsylvania men had one too powerful ar- 
gument in the shape of a four-pounder gun, and 
they retained possession at the end of the year. 
Early in 1770 the forty reappeared, captured the 
four-pounder, and secured possession. For a 
time in 1771 the Pennsylvania men returned, put 
np a fort of their own, and engaged in a partisan 
warfare ; but the numbers of the Connecticut men 
were rapidly increasing, and they remained mas- 
ters until the opening of the Revolution, when 
they numbered some three thousand. The Con- 
necticut general court passed a resolution in 1771, 
maintaining the claim of its colony to its charter 
limits west of the Delaware. In 1774 it erected 
the Susquehanna district into a town, under the 
name of Westmoreland, making it a part of Litch- 
field county, the farthest northwest of the origi- 
nal counties ; and its deputies took their seats in 



278 CONNECTICUT. 

the Connecticut legislature. In 1776, Westmore- 
land town was made a distinct county, and its civil 
organization was complete. Connecticut laws and 
taxes were enforced regularly ; Connecticut courts 
alone were in session ; and the levies from the dis- 
trict formed the twenty-fourth Connecticut regi- 
ment in the Continental armies. The sordid, 
grasping, long -leasing policy of the Penns had 
never been able to stand a moment before the on- 
coming wave of Connecticut democracy, with its 
individual land-ownership, its liberal local govern- 
ment, and the personal incentive offered to indi- 
viduals by its town system. So far as the Penns 
were concerned, the Connecticut town system sim- 
ply swept over them, and hardly thought of them 
as it went. But for the Revolution, the check oc- 
casioned by the massacre, and the appearance of a 
popular government in place of the Penns, nothing 
could have prevented the establishment of Con- 
necticut's authority over all the regions embraced 
in her western claims. 

In July, 1778, after the Continental Congress 
had refused to allow the temporary return of the 
able-bodied men whom the Westmoreland people 
had sent freely into the army, the Tories and In- 
dians, under John Butler and Brandt, fell upon 
the almost defenseless settlement. They met no 
unresisting victims. The old men and boys, the 
town dignitaries who had been administering civil 
affairs, mustered into rank, and only yielded and 



COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 279 

fled after a loss of half their number. The women 
and children were spared for the greater horrors 
of the overland retreat to Connecticut ; and the 
Connecticut possession vanished again into thin 
air. Detached parties returned from time to 
time, gathered scanty crops under constant dan- 
ger from Indians, and kept alive the claims of in- 
dividuals and of the commonwealth. But West- 
moreland county, as it had been, was no more. 

The articles of confederation went into force 
early in 1781. One of their provisions empowered 
congress to appoint courts of arbitration to decide 
disputes between States as to boundaries. Penn- 
sylvania at once availed herself of this, and ap- 
plied for a court to decide the Wyoming dispute. 
Connecticut asked for time, in order to get papers 
from England ; but congress overruled the mo- 
tion, and ordered the court to meet at Trenton in 
November, 1782. After forty-one days of argu- 
ment, the court came to the unanimous conclusion 
that Wyoming, or the Susquehanna district, be- 
longed to Pennsylvania and not to Connecticut. 
It came to light, more than ten years afterward, 
that the court had secretly agreed on two points 
for its guidance : (1) whatever its decision might 
be, it was to assign no reasons for it ; and (2) the 
minority was to yield to the majority, in order to 
make the decision unanimous. The knowledge of 
these antecedent conditions takes away much of 
the force of the decision ; but they Were not 



280 CONNECTICUT, 

known in 1782, and Connecticut yielded at once. 
For this yielding, however, there were probably 
reasons apart from the justice of the decision. 

It was just at this time that the Western terri- 
tory was the controlling question in politics. 
Virginia, under a strained and very dubious inter- 
pretation of her northern boundary, claimed the 
whole Northwest, in addition to Kentucky. The 
States whose western boundaries were fixed had 
two points of objection : Virginia would get none 
of this territory if the authority of the crown were 
reestablished ; and they did not intend to spend 
their blood and money in order to obtain the 
Northwest for Virginia. Connecticut's western 
claims, though based on a clear, not on a doubt- 
ful, charter statement, were too much on a par 
with those of Virginia to be easily separated from 
them. There was an instinctive sense, outside of 
Virginia, that the national existence of the United 
States was bound up with the jurisdiction over 
this Northwest territory ; and Connecticut's share 
in the feeling was enough to balance even her 
selfish interests. She even imperiled the latter 
by yielding to the decision ; for it is hardly pos- 
sible to reconcile the decision of 1782, which ig- 
nored the charter, with the acceptance by congress 
of the Connecticut cession of 1786, which im- 
pliedly recognized the charter and the very claims 
which had been rejected in 1782. There was no 
bargain, for Pennsylvania in 1786 voted not to 



COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 281 

accept the cession, on the ground that it recog- 
nized the charter. Connecticut simply made way 
intelligently, if somewhat regretfully, for the 
coming nationality. 

The cession of 1786 of course put an end to all 
Connecticut's ambitions of commonwealth expan- 
sion : she was to be forever restricted to the terri- 
tory lying between Massachusetts and Long Is- 
land Sound, and between Rhode Island and New 
York. And yet the legal title of Connecticut to 
the territory which she gave up by this cession 
was beyond dispute. It has been suggested that 
the crown made the grant under ignorance, sup- 
posing that North America was far narrower than 
it proved to be. But the Plymouth council, when 
it gave up its charter in 1635, notified the king 
that their grant was " through all the main land, 
from sea to sea, being near about three thousand 
miles in length" There was not a geographer in 
England but knew that the Connecticut grant, in 
its turn, was three thousand miles long. It was 
adduced as a prior grant by the English com- 
missioners against the French in 1752, in order to 
assert title across the Mississippi. Its validity was 
recognized by the Albany congress of 1754, Penn- 
sylvania being represented. The establishment 
of the Mississippi as a boundary line -between the 
colonies and Spain was founded on these western 
charters of indefinite extent. The peace of 1783, 
which' laid claim to the Mississippi as a western 



282 CONNECTICUT. 

boundary for the United States, was a renewed 
affirmation of the charters which had carried the 
claims of the United States up to that river. Fi- 
nally, the acceptance of the Connecticut cession 
by the United States in 1786 was a renewed con- 
firmation of the charter's validity, on which the 
further claim of the United States was based. 
The fact that Connecticut had yielded to the 
erection of the new colony of New York was of 
interest only to the two colonies involved, — Con- 
necticut and New York ; .no third party, as Penn- 
sylvania, could gain or lose any rights thereby. 

It would have been absurd to ask Connecticut 
to surrender a claim so sound in law, and so for- 
tified by repeated recognitions, without any rec- 
ompense. Her proposition, that she should re- 
serve a tract of about the same length and width 
as the Wyoming grant, west of Pennsylvania, in 
northeastern Ohio, was accepted ; and this was 
the tract known as the Western Reserve of Con- 
necticut. It contained about three and a half 
millions of acres. In 1792 some five hundred 
thousand acres in the western part of the Reserve 
were devoted to the relief of those persons who 
had been burned out and plundered by the Brit- 
ish : this was known as the "Fire Lands." The 
rest was sold under the direction of a legislative 
committee, and the proceeds were devoted to the 
school fund of the commonwealth. It was not 
very productive until Senator James Hillhouse 



COMMONWEALTH DEVELOPMENT. 283 

was appointed sole commissioner in 1810. He 
held the position for some fifteen years, and in- 
creased the principal to nearly $2,000,000, with 
an annual income of over $50,000. This principal 
still remains intact. 

The unfortunate Wyoming settlers, deserted by 
their own State, and left to the mercy of rival 
claimants, had a hard time of it for years. The 
militia of the neighboring counties of Pennsylva- 
nia was mustered to enforce the writs of Pennsyl- 
vania courts : the property of the Connecticut 
men was destroyed, their fences were cast down, 
and their rights ignored ; and the " Pennamite 
and Yankee War " began. The Yankees were evi- 
dently getting the worse, and their friends at 
home were not deaf to their grievances. The old 
Susquehanna Company was reorganized in 1785- 
86, and made ready to support its settlers by force. 
New Yankee faces came crowding into the dis- 
puted territory. Among them was Ethan Allen, 
and with him came some Green Mountain Boys, 
the promise and potency of more, and pungent 
memories of the manner in which Vermont had 
solved a similar difficulty with New York. It was 
an open secret that the intention was to organize 
a new State, and weary Pennsylvania and con- 
gress into a recognition of it. Its constitution had 
been drafted, and its state officers tacitly agreed 
upon. 

Pennsylvania in 1786 passed an accommodation 



284 CONNECTICUT. 

act, by which the lands of actual settlers were 
confirmed to them, and the district was erected 
into the county of Luzerne. Unfortunately, there 
were dissensions between the old settlers and the 
new-comers of the Wyoming district, and Penn- 
sylvania suspended the accommodation act in 
1788, and repealed it in 1790. There were re- 
newed struggles, and in 1799 the act was sub- 
stantially reenacted, and the controversy came to 
an end. The settlement had the result of car- 
rying into Pennsylvania a large infusion of Con- 
necticut blood, the source of the prevalence of 
Connecticut names in this part of Pennsylvania. 



CHAPTER XVI. 
THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 

The close of the French and Indian war marks 
the period when Connecticut's democratic consti- 
tution began to influence other commonwealths. 
Her charter was an object-lesson to all of them. 
It was the standard to which their demands grad- 
ually came up ; and their growing demands upon 
the crown caused an equally steady approximation 
toward the establishment of a local democracy 
like that which Connecticut had kept up for a 
hundred and fifty years. 

The passage of the Stamp Act by the English 
Parliament was met at once by a protest from the 
Connecticut general assembly, followed by in- 
structions to its agent in London to insist firmly 
on " the exclusive right of the colonies to tax 
themselves and on the privilege of trial by jury," 
as rights which " they never could recede from." 
It had good reason to speak plainly, for the prin- 
ciple of the act struck more heavily at Connecti- 
cut than at any other colony except Rhode Is- 
land. No other colonies had been so completely 
free from any appearance of royal interference as 



286 CONNECTICUT. 

these ; and Connecticut's lack of commerce had 
prevented it from feeling even those forms of 
royal interference which the commercial interests 
of Rhode Island had brought upon it. To Con- 
necticut the act was simply intolerable, and she 
not only spoke but made ready for action. 

Jared Ingersoll, of New Haven, was sent to 
London as special agent to remonstrate against 
the passage of the act. When his mission had 
failed, he accepted the office of stamp agent for 
Connecticut, by advice of Franklin, and set out 
for home. He found things there in a ferment. 
The governor and some of the leading men were 
willing to submit, rather than risk the loss of the 
charter, but the instinct of the democracy taught 
it that this was* the time to put its charter priv- 
ileges into security forever. The ministers were 
preaching against the act ; the towns were order- 
ing their officers to disregard it, promising to hold 
them harmless ; Trumbull had become the head 
of a popular movement ; and volunteer organiza- 
tions, calling themselves " Sons of Liberty," were 
patrolling the country, overawing those who were 
inclined to support the home government, and 
making ready to resist the execution of the law. 
Ingersoll seems to have been sufficiently impressed 
with the strength of the home government to be 
willing to avoid a conflict ; and he meant now to 
execute faithfully the office which he had accepted 
only to make its provisions more tolerable to his 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 287 

countrymen. The meeting between him and them 
was that of the flint and steel. The Sons of Lib- 
erty were out and in waiting for him as he rode 
from New Haven to Hartford ; and he entered 
the capital under the escort of a thousand horse- 
men, farmers and freeholders, who had compelled 
him to resign his office. He had not lost his head 
or shown any craven frailty : he had simply made 
up his mind that he had gone far enough in an 
unpleasant duty, and that " the cause was not 
worth dying for." He had, however, carried his 
resistance up to the verge of temerity ; and, as he 
rode on his white horse at the head of the trium- 
phant mob, he said afterward that he realized 
at last what the book of Revelation meant by 
"Death on the pale horse, and hell following 
him." 

Governor Fitch died in 1766, and, after a three 
years' service of William Pitkin, Jonathan Trum- 
bull, the first " war governor " of Connecticut, 
succeeded him. He held the office until 1783 ; he 
was the trusted associate of Washington, and the 
latter's familiar way of addressing him when ask- 
ing his advice or assistance is said to have been 
the origin of the popular phrase " Brother Jona- 
than." The family has been one of the most 
noted in the history of the commonwealth. It 
has included Governor Jonathan Trumbull, his 
sons John (the painter), Jonathan* governor from 
1798 until 1809, and Joseph, commissary general 



288 CONNECTICUT. 

of the Revolutionary army ; John Trumbull, the 
author of " McFingal ; " Benjamin Trumbull, the 
author of one of the. standard histories of the 
State ; James Hammond Trumbull, the recognized 
authority on the Indian languages and the history 
of the State ; his brother, H. C. Trumbull, a 
leader in missionary and Sunday-school work ; and 
ex-Senator Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois. The 
reign of the Trumbulls was ushered in brilliantly 
by the governor. In him the people had found 
the man they needed, and doubt and hesitation 
fled before him. 

The rapid succession of events which followed 
the Boston Tea Party — the Boston Port Bill, the 
Massachusetts Act, and the preparations of Massa- 
chusetts for active resistance — met prompt sym- 
pathy and support in Connecticut. The non-im- 
portation agreement had been universally signed 
in 1768-69, and, if contemporary accounts are to 
be trusted, was kept far more faithfully in Con- 
necticut than in some of her neighbor colonies. 
Unofficial preparations, with the quiet approval of 
the official authorities, were now made, so that, 
when hostilities began, Connecticut was the first 
colony to take her place abreast of Massachusetts. 
In all this there was not one iota of change in 
the traditional policy of the colony. In the pro- 
ceedings which led to the loss or serious modifica- 
tion of the Massachusetts charter in 1691, Con- 
necticut had taken no part with the attacked col- 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 289 

ony, partly because the latter had no intentions of 
real resistance, and partly because such resistance, 
under the circumstances into which Massachusetts 
had got herself, was evidently hopeless. In 1728 
likewise, when Massachusetts was engaging in a 
war of annoyances with her royal governors, Con- 
necticut had instructed her London agent to take 
no part with Massachusetts, but to secure the 
colony's maintenance of her charter quite inde- 
pendently of her. The Connecticut general as- 
sembly had a great trust confided to it, and it was 
not disposed to risk it in Quixotic enterprises of 
this sort. In 1769-70 Massachusetts had at last 
been wrought up to concert pitch : her people ev- 
idently meant to fight ; there was a fair chance of 
success, since the other colonies showed their in- 
tention of supporting her ; the enterprise was neces- 
sary, was no longer Quixotic, and Connecticut went 
into it heart and soul. Nothing in the history of 
this commonwealth is so noteworthy as the pre- 
vailing characteristic of its people, — their judicial 
power of estimating the chances of success, their 
self-restraint under every provocation until the 
chances seem to be reasonably good, and their un- 
reserved abandonment to action when the time 
for action seems to have fully come. It is Con- 
necticut tradition that the first step of the gen- 
eral assembly in 1763 was to appoint three of its 
ablest men to argue in favor of the right of parlia- 
ment to tax the colonies, and three fairly matched 

19 



290 CONNECTICUT. 

opponents to argue against it ; that the argument, 
consuming several days, took place before the as- 
sembly under a pledge of secrecy from all con- 
cerned ; and that its result was the unanimous 
agreement of the members against the right of 
parliament, and in favor of the lawfulness of resist- 
ance. The story is fairly typical of the Connecti- 
cut way of looking at questions of the kind, its 
determination to anchor tenacity of purpose fast 
in legality of object, and to insist first on being 
right. One may well speculate as to the results 
on American history if such a people, instead of 
being cribbed into four thousand square miles of 
territory, had been able to impress their character- 
istics on the population of the magnificent domain 
which was theirs by charter. 

At first, the preparations for resistance were 
made by the towns, which acted, in the traditional 
Connecticut fashion, as if they were little com- 
monwealths in themselves. They met, voted sol- 
emn condemnation of the ministry, appointed 
committees of safety, and appropriated money to 
buy arms and powder. Every town sent its con- 
tribution to the poor of Boston, and every com- 
mittee felt bound also to send a long letter of con- 
dolence. The general assembly then began prepa- 
rations to direct the storm. In May and October, 
1774, it appointed military officers where they 
were needed ; directed every military company in 
the colony to be drilled, with fines for non-attend- 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 291 

ance ; and sent delegates to the Continental Con- 
gress. The recommendations of that body against 
importing or exporting goods from or to Great 
Britain were endorsed by the general assembly, 
and were faithfully carried out. But it is, again, 
a curious survival of primitive conditions that the 
towns thought it necessary for them also to meet 
and endorse the action of congress and the assem- 
bly. The town republics, which had given birth 
to the commonwealth, were still conscious of an 
abundant vitality. 

The battle of Lexington led to the first offen- 
sive movement by the Americans ; and it is a sin- 
gularly fitting testimony to Connecticut's readi- 
ness to help Massachusetts, that, while the latter 
was defending herself, this offensive movement 
for her relief, the capture of Ticonderoga and its 
stores, came from Connecticut. The general as- 
sembly refrained from officially sanctioning it ; 
but it was undertaken with its approval, and it 
paid the bills for the expedition two years after- 
ward. The opportunity for the venture was of- 
fered by the close connection which had so long 
existed between Connecticut and Vermont. Silas 
Deane and ten associates, having assurances of 
the assembly's approval, took the money, some 
£800, out of the .treasury, giving their receipts 
therefor ; took a party of Connecticut volunteers 
to Vermont ; raised a force among the kindred 
spirits of that region ; and made the capture 



292 CONNECTICUT. 

which brought encouragement and relief to the 
blockading army before Boston. 

Long before this, however, the men of Connec- 
ticut had been in motion for Boston. The first 
message from the governor to Putnam, announ- 
cing the fight at Concord and Lexington, found 
the veteran at work in his field. He left the plow 
in the furrow, galloped to the governor's resi- 
dence, and received orders to go to Boston forth- 
with. He rode thither in eighteen hours, without 
dismounting, and was followed by the volunteers 
of his colony, many of whom had undergone train- 
ing in the French and Indian war. With Put- 
nam, as leading officers, were David Wooster and 
Joseph Spencer, also veterans ; they were com- 
missioned by congress as brigadier-generals, and 
Putnam as major-general. It is a little curious 
that Arnold, though a Connecticut man by birth, 
did not receive any special recognition from the 
colony, his commissions and employments being 
mainly from Massachusetts. 

The general assembly ordered the emission of 
£100,000 in bills of credit, to provide for the 
equipment of eight regiments, which were ordered 
to be enlisted from the militia. One result of the 
far-sighted preparations of the commonwealth was, 
that, when the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, 
and the ammunition of the fort's defenders con- 
sisted of but sixty-three half-barrels of powder, 
thirty-six of them were a present from the colony 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 293 

of Connecticut. Like all the other New England 
colonies, she sent men who were unaccustomed to 
discipline, and were not easily brought under 
prompt military obedience ; but Bunker Hill was 
enough to show that they could at least fight 
when placed before an enemy. If there was a 
flag in the line, it was theirs ; they held the rail 
fence until the retreat was secured ; and their 
leader, Putnam, put his own life at stake again 
and again in the effort to check the retreat at 
Bunker Hill, and at every step on the road off the 
peninsula. Indeed, it is a mooted question 
whether, in the general confusion of the day, Put- 
nam should not be considered the commander of 
the American forces engaged. 

The colony itself was comparatively safe from 
invasion except on the coast, where there was an 
attack on Stonington by a British vessel. Never- 
theless, those who had not gone to the seat of war 
were not disposed to remain idle. Connecticut 
was practically unanimous on the great question ; 
New York was badly divided, and the Tories there 
were men of influence and determination. The 
man of most influence among them was Riving- 
ton, the publisher of the " New York Gazette," 
the Tory newspaper organ. Early in September, 
1775, Captain Isaac Sears, having raised a troop 
of Connecticut horsemen, rode into New York 
city, raided the " Gazette " office, and carried off 
the types and apparatus. Early in 1776 Gen- 



294 CONNECTICUT. 

eral Lee seized New York city with some 1,200 
Connecticut troops, and held it until Washington's 
army was transferred thither after the evacuation 
of Boston. Then Putnam was put in command 
of the city and its environs, and drove off the Eng- 
lish fleet. One of the ornaments of the city had 
been an equestrian statue of King George, cast in 
lead and gilt. Just a week after the adoption of 
the Declaration of Independence, this was carried 
off by night to the house of Oliver Wolcott, in 
Litchfield county, and there cast into bullets, 
making 42,088 cartridges. 

While the zeal of the people thus outran official 
discretion, the Connecticut authorities also had all 
that they could attend to, though in a soberer 
way. Governor Trumbull's correspondence with 
Washington had already assumed that close and 
confidential cast which it maintained throughout 
the contest. The assembly was busily engaged in 
raising men, and providing for their support by 
the issue of bills and by taxation. It is not too 
much to say that for a time almost the entire bur- 
den of the struggle lay upon Connecticut ; and 
the unflinching manner in which it was met and 
sustained is made more conspicuous by the fact 
that the colony was not individually menaced as 
were colonies which refused to bear any fair pro- 
portion of the burden. The Department of the 
North, in 1775, had 2,800 men in the field ; 2,500 
of these were Connecticut troops. When Wash- 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 295 

ington's army settled down around New York, 
more than half of his force of 17,000 men had 
been contributed by Connecticut. It was not 
wonderful that Washington should write to the 
governor that he had " full confidence in your 
most ready assistance on every occasion, and that 
such measures as appear to you most likely to ad- 
vance the public good, in this and every instance, 
will be most cheerfully adopted ; " nor that he 
should speak of the assembly in such terms as 
these : " I have nothing to suggest for the consid- 
eration of your assembly ; I am confident they 
will not be wanting in their exertions for support- 
ing the just and constitutional rights of the colo- 
nies." Even Washington's emphasis had some- 
thing of reserve and self-restraint about it; and 
his unreserve in this case derives additional force 
from his well-grounded complaints of the action of 
colonial authorities in general. 

One of the captains of Knowlton's Connecticut 
regiment was Captain Nathan Hale, a graduate of 
Yale in 1773, a young man of fine personal pres- 
ence and of high intelligence. His family was 
settled in Coventry, Conn. ; and his ancestor had 
been the first minister of Beverly, Mass. While 
Washington was lying near Fort Washington, af- 
ter the retreat from Long Island, it became im- 
peratively necessary for him to obtain accurate 
intelligence from the British camp. He called 
for a volunteer from the younger officers of the 



296 CONNECTICUT. 

army, and Hale was the only one who offered him- 
self. His offer was accepted, and his mission had 
been accomplished with skill and success, when 
he was recognized by a Tory relative in the Brit- 
ish lines, who sent word to headquarters that an 
American spy was at work in the camp. Adver- 
tised and described throughout the lines, he yet 
had sufficient address to make his way as far as 
the outposts before he was arrested. The testi- 
mony of his relative convicted him, and he was 
hanged on the following morning. Not so much 
his fate, as the manner of it, exasperated the peo- 
ple of the commonwealth. He was denied the 
company of a minister ; the poor consolation of a 
written message home was refused ; and it was 
the common report that the reason for this bar- 
barity of punishment was that " the rebels might 
not know that they had a man in their army who 
could die with such firmness." In the traditional 
Connecticut spirit, having undertaken the work, 
he did not flinch from its consummation. His last 
words were : "If I had ten thousand lives, I 
would lay them down in defense of my country." 
The words meant something in his mouth. 

On the coast, the preponderant navy of the 
king was very annoying, but principally in its at- 
tacks on chicken-roosts and sheepfolds. Yankee 
ingenuity exerted itself to get rid of the annoy- 
ance. David Bushnell, another young graduate 
of Yale, of the class of 1775, living at Say brook, 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 297 

stimulated by the necessity of the case, brought 
out his " American Turtle," which was to antici- 
pate the modern system of torpedoes, and blow the 
British fleet out of water. The Turtle contained 
a magazine of explosives, and a connected system 
of clock-work, and could be kept under the control 
of the operator on shore, so as to rise and fall at 
his will. The first attempt, made by a person 
unfamiliar with the mechanism, resulted in a tre- 
mendous explosion, not under the vessel aimed at, 
but near enough to put the naval officers into a 
terrible fright. Another attempt had better suc- 
cess, and this increased the terror. Still another, 
in 1777, gave rise to the panic among the British 
forces at Philadelphia which Hopkinson celebrated 
in his " Battle of the Kegs." Long afterward, in 
1813, on a similar occasion, the too impertinent 
intrusion of the British fleet on the shores of Con- 
necticut was rebuked and checked in the same 
fashion. A British vessel was allowed to capture 
a vessel in which explosives had been connected 
with a clock-work. The Ramillies barely escaped 
destruction, and her angry commander inflicted a 
bombardment on the offending town, Stonington, 
demanding as the price of exemption that the in- 
habitants should promise to set no more torpedoes 
afloat, a demand which was promptly refused. 

The interior of the commonwealth, secure alike 
by its distance from the seat of war, by the uni- 
versal loyalty of its population, and by the primi- 



298 CONNECTICUT. 

tive simplicity of a people who knew all their 
neighbors for miles, and could detect any one at- 
tempting an escape, was a most excellent place for 
the detention of prisoners. The jails, the public 
buildings, and even the private houses of the 
northern townships, were made places of deposit 
for prisoners of war or for political prisoners. 
Hither came the Tory officials of New York, the 
prisoners from Long Island, and others ; and the 
lenity of their treatment stood in strong contrast 
with the condition of the Americans who returned 
from the horrible prison-hulks of the British forces, 
starved, diseased, and treated with every shade of 
heathenish cruelty short of absolute cannibalism. 
Their return home is particularly creditable to the 
colonists in that it seems to have made no differ- 
ence in their treatment of their own prisoners, or 
rather guests. 

It must be acknowledged that the substantial 
unanimity of the people had been secured by 
strong, if unofficial, measures. The authorities 
winked assiduously at the operations of the town 
committees who made it their special business to 
see that Tories recanted, left the town, or were 
placed where they would do the least harm. We 
have no means of ascertaining exactly how far it 
was necessary for these committees to go. Terrible 
accounts of their doings, of their riotous proceed- 
ings, tarrings and featherings, etc., are given us 
by the Rev. Samuel Peters, a Tory clergyman of 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 299 

the Church of England, who was driven from the 
colony during the opening troubles, and afterwards 
took a terrible revenge by publishing a " History " 
of Connecticut in London. But Peters stands also 
as the only authority for the phenomena at Bel- 
lows' Falls, where the water of the Connecticut 
River runs so swiftly that an iron crowbar cannot 
be forced into it, but floats on the surface ; for the 
inhumanity, to give it no worse name, of Hooker, 
in giving to the Connecticut Indians Bibles infected 
with the smallpox, so as to put them out of the 
way of the rising young colony ; for the amusing 
manner in which the inhabitants of Windham, 
alarmed by the noise of an invading army, kept 
guard against it all night, finding in the morning 
that it was no more than a flying column of frogs 
on the way to water ; for those singular members 
of the Connecticut fauna, the u whapperknocker " 
and the " cuba," whose untamable ferocity, so well 
known to all naturalists, the veracious " Doctor " 
takes pleasure in describing from personal obser- 
vation ; and for such a mass of other lies as Mun- 
chausen himself might have been proud to father. 
Unless this mass of fiction is also to be taken on 
Peters's authority, it is difficult to see how his 
authority is to count for much as to the asserted 
mistreatment of Connecticut Tories. 

Outside of Peters's statements, and the vague 
newspaper stories current at that day, the strongest 
case made against the Connecticut fathers of the 



300 CONNECTICUT. 

republic is in their use of the Simsbury copper- 
mines as a place of confinement for Tories " and 
other notorious offenders." The existence of cop- 
per at Simsbury was suspected as early as 1705 ; 
and the town leased the mines to various compa- 
nies, who brought over miners from Germany and 
spent their money freely, but got little of it back. 
The ore contained from fifteen to twenty per cent, 
of copper, but was too refractory to do more than 
lure speculators into bankruptcy through assayers' 
reports. Governor Belcher wrote in 1735 that he 
had spent $75,000 there since 1721. Coins, called 
" Granby coppers," from the residence of the coiner 
in the neighboring town of Granby, were made 
from the metal in 1737-39 ; but the copper was so 
nearly pure, and so much in demand for jewelers' 
alloy, that they have almost disappeared. In 1773 
mining ceased, and the colony spent about $375 in 
fitting up the mine as a prison. The main shaft 
was near the top of a small hill ; and the buildings 
at the mouth, the wall surrounding them, and the 
naked hill sloping down in front of it, must have 
added a shade of horror to the unknown future in 
the mind of the Tory who was approaching it. 
Certain it is that hardly anything was so dreadful 
to the Tory mind as the prospect of incarceration 
at Simsbury. In 1781 congress applied for per- 
mission to use it as a prison for state offenders ; 
but the almost immediate cessation of hostilities 
relieved the national authority from any such ne- 
cessity. 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 301 

The number confined here, both of ordinary of- 
fenders and of Tories, probably never exceeded 
thirty at any one time ; but the number of insur- 
rections and escapes was disproportionately great, 
showing that even copper-mines will not a prison 
make. The shaft was nearly a hundred feet deep ; 
but the cells were in the galleries, none of them 
more than sixty feet below the surface. In spite 
of the frequent escapes, public confidence in the 
security of the place was unimpaired, and it was 
the ordinary state prison from 1790 until 1827, 
when the new prison at Wethersfield took its 
place. In defense of the establishment of the 
prison in such a location, it may be urged that 
such a step was not considered improper anywhere 
at the time ; that the terrors of the place were 
more in imagination than in reality; that the 
health of the prisoners was good and was not af- 
fected unfavorably by their location ; and that 
special practices of that time must not be judged 
by the more civilized theory of a later era. So 
late as 1807, a traveler who visited it could go no 
further in reprehension than to say : " For myself, 
I cannot get rid of the impression that, without 
any extraordinary cruelty in its actual operation, 
there is something very like cruelty in the device 
and design." How much more lenient must have 
been the judgment of a sound Whig of 1775 when 
he saw a Tory consigned to the Simsbury New- 
gate ! 



302 CONNECTICUT. 

Patriotic solicitude must have been reinforced 
by religious intolerance. The Episcopal Church 
had always been an alien in Connecticut. Its 
founders had broken away from the Established 
or Congregational Church ; their success had di- 
minished the resources of the latter ; their minis- 
ters had to cross the ocean to be ordained, and to 
take a special oath of allegiance to the crown ; 
they were his majesty's opposition in a colony 
which liked neither majesty nor opposition ; and 
they were strongly suspected of a design to reduce 
this, with the other colonies, to some form of 
episcopacy. The latter belief, which had a special 
weight in bringing about the final revolution, was 
increased in Connecticut by the fact that, when- 
ever the Episcopal Church had come into collision 
with the colonial authorities, its first and most ef- 
fective weapon had always been a threat of appeal 
to the home government. There was probably 
hardly a man in Connecticut who, being a Whig 
and a Congregationalist, did not believe that every 
Episcopalian was either an open or a secret Tory, 
and that the Episcopalian ministers were their 
leaders and guides. The Episcopal churches in 
the colony were shut, and the ministers were si- 
lenced, except Rev. John Beach, an Episcopalian 
missionary at Reading and Newtown, who persisted 
in praying for the king as usual, in spite of rough 
treatment at the hands of the Whigs. For the 
time, the Episcopal Church in Connecticut was sus« 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 303 

pended, and its members were almost outlawed, 
for the colonial authorities would give them only 
a grudging protection. The reestablishment of 
peace brought the reestablishment of the Church ; 
and, thirty years later, the sons of its members 
had the pious satisfaction of disestablishing the 
Church which had persecuted their fathers. 

The connection between the Episcopalians of 
Connecticut and of New York city had always 
been close, and it cannot be supposed that the suf- 
ferings of the Connecticut Tories had been looked 
at with indifference in New York. As the tide of 
war rolled off through the Jerseys toward Phila- 
delphia, stripping Connecticut of a large portion 
of its able-bodied men, the time seemed to have 
come for a blow that should teach the Congrega- 
tional colony that its enemies had still some of the 
terrors of war at their command. Tryon, the 
royalist governor of New York, with a force of two 
thousand men and twenty-five vessels, sailed east- 
ward through Long Island Sound, and landed at 
Saugatuck, about twenty miles from Danbury, 
where a considerable amount of Continental and 
State stores had been gathered. A hasty march 
overland brought them to Danbury, April 2C 
1777, where they destroyed not only the stores, 
but the bulk of the town, carefully sparing Tory 
property. There were some Continental soldiers 
in the neighborhood, and two officers of rank, 
Wooster and Arnold. The latter rallied all the 



304 CONNECTICUT. 

men available, regulars and militia, and headed 
Try on on his retreat, at Ridgefield. In the battle, 
Wooster was mortally wounded, and Try on broke 
through and resumed his way to the Sound. Ar- 
nold kept up the pursuit until the British took 
refuge on the shipping and sailed away. The ex- 
pedition was followed by one from New Haven in 
retaliation. Colonel Meigs crossed the Sound with 
nearly two hundred men in whaleboats to Sag 
Harbor, attacked the place a little after midnight, 
captured it, and burned twelve vessels, with a 
large amount of stores. He then recrossed the 
Sound with ninety prisoners, and without losing a 
man. 

In the mean time Connecticut had become a 
State. In May, 1776, the people had been formally 
released from their allegiance to the crown ; and 
in October the general assembly passed an act 
assuming the functions of a State. The important 
section of the act was the first, as follows : " That 
the ancient form of civil government, contained in 
the charter from Charles the Second, King of Eng- 
land, and adopted by the people of this State, shall 
be and remain the civil Constitution of this State, 
under the sole authority of the people thereof, in- 
dependent of any King or Prince whatever. And 
that this Republic is, and shall forever be and re- 
main, a free, sovereign, and independent State, by 
the name of the State of Connecticut." The form 
of the act speaks what was doubtless always the 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 305 

belief of the people, that their charter derived its 
validity, not from the will of the crown, but from 
the assent of the people. And the curious language 
of the last sentence, in which " this Republic " de- 
clares itself to be " a free, sovereign, and indepen- 
dent State," may serve to indicate something cf 
the appearance which state sovereignty doubtless 
presented to the American of 1776-89. It is not 
safe to take " the United States " of 1887 as ex- 
actly equivalent, in the eyes of the people, to 
"the United States" of 1776-89. The nation 
was born ; but its constituent units were often 
painfully unconscious of the birth. 

The main theatre of war continued to be out- 
side of the State ; but her troops shared in all its 
dangers and hardships* The one great business 
of the State authorities was to fill up the State's 
quota of men and provide for their maintenance ; 
that of the towns was to fill up their quotas, and 
to follow the ever-shifting continental currency by 
changing the necessary salaries as it changed. No 
one can follow the town records without receiving 
an increased respect for the persistent devotion of 
the people to the common cause. There seems to 
have been little attempt to shift burdens to the 
shoulders of others ; but each town accepted . its 
share as a necessary fact, and strained every en- 
ergy to meet it. It would have been hardly pos- 
sible that such devotion should have been purely 
unselfish; the fact was that, safe as the State was 

20 



806 CONNECTICUT. 

in general, there was hardly a moment when it 
was not exposed to the possibility of harassing par- 
tisan warfare. The British headquarters in New 
York city were so near, and transportation by 
ship was so easy, that the whole coast of the State 
was exposed. In addition to the services of her 
regular levies, the purely State troops were com- 
pelled to serve tours of duty on the coast; and 
detachments were posted in the various exposed 
towns. Putnam had been in command of the 
American forces, and his headquarters had been 
at Peekskill, within supporting distance of the 
new post at West Point, whose importance he had 
been the first to see and secure. He removed his 
headquarters to Reading in 1778, and from that 
place fulfilled his old duty, while aiding in the de- 
fense of the exposed portions of his own State. It 
was during this period of service that he met with 
the adventure at Horse Neck, which is one of the 
best known of his eventful life, though it was 
probably one of which he thought the least. One 
of the most urgent needs of the " rebels " was 
salt. It was made roughly at various places on 
the coast, and, with all its inevitable impurities, 
was grateful enough to the people. One of these 
salt-works was at Horse Neck, and a British force 
came up from New York to destroy it. Putnam 
delayed so long in providing for his men's retreat 
that his only way of escape was to plunge on horse- 
back down a long flight of stone steps, his baffled 
pursuers reining in at the top and contenting 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 307 

themselves with firing ineffectually at him as he 
went. 

Early in the winter of 1779-80, Putnam under- 
took a visit to his home in Pomfret, but was 
struck with partial paralysis on his journey. He 
never recovered from it, but was disabled until 
his death in 1790. Washington thus lost the ser- 
vices of one on whom he had always leaned 
largely. He was perhaps the most uneducated 
officer in the army ; his name was synonymous in 
the British view with bad manners and coarse- 
ness ; his portrait is that of a gross, heavy man, 
as far removed as possible from the popular no- 
tion of the Connecticut Yankee ; but his prompt 
decision, natural intelligence, and unswerving de- 
termination were just the qualities that would rec- 
ommend him equally to his men and to the com- 
mander-in-chief. They are shown in his letter of 
the previous year to Tryon, in a case in which the 
latter had threatened retaliation. If it is not gen- 
uine, it is a most skillful forgery, for it speaks the 
voice of Putnam in every line. It is as follows : — 

" Sir : Nathan Palmer, a lieutenant in your 
King's service, was taken in my camp as a spy. 
He was tried as a spy ; he was condemned as a 
spy ; and you may rest assured, sir, he shall be 
hanged as a spy. I have the honor to be, &c. 

Israel Putnam. 
His Excellency, Governor Tryon. 

P. S. Afternoon. He is hanged. 11 



308 CONNECTICUT. 

The Fourth of July in 1779 fell on Sunday, and 
the people of New Haven had made arrangements 
to celebrate the Declaration of American Inde- 
pendence on the day after. Before the exercises 
had fairly begun, the town was thrown into con- 
sternation by the news that Tryon's fleet and 
forces, numbering 3,000 men in some forty-eigbt 
vessels, had dropped anchor near West Haven at 
five o'clock that morning, and were on the march 
for New Haven. They came in two detachments, 
of 1,500 men each, one marching from West Ha- 
ven, the other attacking and capturing a small 
fort at Black Rock on its way. The first detach- 
ment met some resistance, and entered the town 
by the Derby Road. By one o'clock in the after- 
noon all resistance had been overcome, and the 
invaders had met at the green, then an unsightly 
common. The town was given up to plunder un- 
til the following morning, when the British retired 
as suddenly as they had come. They had been 
guilty of many acts of the most barbarous cruelty, 
the accounts of which are preserved in tradition 
or print ; they had inflicted a money loss of some 
£25,000, but the buildings of the college and the 
other public edifices were undamaged. 

Sailing along the coast, Tryon landed at Fair- 
field, July 8, and destroyed that place. Here 
public and private buildings alike were fired. 
The same was the case at the village of Green's 
Farms the next morning; and then the British 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 309 

commander called off his dogs for a little space. 
They crossed the Sound to Huntington Bay, and 
remained there until July 11. Recrossing the 
Sound to Norwalk, they spent the day in the- work 
of destruction. When they took their departure, 
the quiet little town had disappeared but for the 
smoke of its torment, which hung over the spot 
where it had been. By this time the population 
of the interior was mustering to meet Tryon at 
his next landing, and he prudently retired to 
headquarters. He had inflicted upon Connecti- 
cut a loss of about £ 250, 000, as appeared by 
the proven claims for which the general assembly, 
as before stated, allotted 500,000 acres of north- 
western lands in 1792. But he had not broken 
the spirit of the people ; and his own loss in men, 
nearly three hundred, was enough to convince, 
him that such attacks were no longer to take rank 
as purely plundering expeditions, but were to be 
attended with some danger to life and limb. 
Such knowledge was sufficient to appease his 
martial ardor, and he vexed Connecticut very 
little more. 

Tryon had been so injudicious as to give special 
protection to the property of Tories in his work ; 
and the Tories had been so imprudent as not only 
to receive the protection but to exult in it. A few 
of them had taken the inevitable next step, by 
retiring with Tryon's fleet ; but others had the 
weakness or folly to remain. In May, 1778, the 



310 CONNECTICUT. 

general assembly had begun the process of confis- 
cation against avowed or absconding Tories, under 
the euphemism of " settling their estates ; " the 
Try on episode naturally had the effect of stimu- 
lating the energy of the State authorities in en- 
forcing the process, and of provoking even a more 
bitter feeling of the Whigs against those Tories 
who retained their former dwelling-places. Some 
of the names which had been most influential in 
the history of the colony disappeared at this time 
from the records of the State, and their property 
passed into other hands. But some of the former 
holders remained, and their influence in subse- 
quent politics is a fair witness to the clemency of 
Connecticut. Dr. Peters himself returned to his 
former parish in 1806, for a visit, and found that 
•even his " History " had been condoned. He died 
at New York in 1826 ; and his nephew was gov- 
ernor of Connecticut in 1831-32. 

The Connecticut authorities had been indefati- 
gable in raising and provisioning troops, and her 
people had been equally earnest in offering their 
services. In the number of men contributed she 
stood second of the States with 31,939 men, Mas- 
sachusetts being first with 67,907. Considering 
differences of population, and more especially dif- 
ferences in immediate danger, Connecticut's quota 
stands out well beside the 25,678 of Pennsylva- 
nia, the 17,781 of New York, the 6,417 of South 
Carolina, or the 2,679 of Georgia. In general 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 311 

orders of June 16, 1782, Washington spoke of the 
Connecticut Brigade as " composed of as fine a 
body of men as any in the army ; " and he ex- 
pressed a wish for a general review of the men, to 
decide the relative proficiency of the Connecticut 
men. In another order, issued two days after- 
ward, he thus expressed his high opinion of the 
State's line : " The General informs the Army he 
had great occasion to be satisfied at the review of 
the Second Connecticut Brigade yesterday, espe- 
cially with the soldier-like and veteran appearance 
of the men, and the exactness with which the fir- 
ings were performed. He felt particular pleasure 
in observing the cleanliness and steadiness of the 
second Regiment under arms." And the historian 
of the commonwealth may be pardoned for taking 
a "particular pleasure" in noting the fact, that, 
with the exception of a briefer compliment to a 
Massachusetts brigade, this is the only instance in 
Washington's Revolutionary orders of such public 
commendation of any State's quota. In almost 
all cases Connecticut men were drafted into ser- 
vice outside of the State, to make good the defi- 
ciencies of less zealous States. She had, in addi- 
tion, to maintain almost all the defense of her own 
borders, and that while Long Island Sound was 
under complete control of the enemy's ships. Her 
success in so doing almost stopped civilized life 
around the Sound. The Connecticut Tories were 
driven to Long Island, while the Long Island Whigs 



312 CONNECTICUT. 

crossed into Connecticut ; and the waters of the 
Sound were harassed by almost continual skir- 
mishing. When the French forces were quartered 
within the State, her people enjoyed a season of 
comparative tranquillity. When they were with- 
drawn for the march on Yorktown, which was 
planned by Washington and the French leaders 
in a meeting at Wethersfield, Arnold, now in the 
British service, made his raid on New London, 
and the State, as usual, was compelled to meet the 
shock almost unsupported. 

Arnold, a native of Norwich, knew the country 
around New London well, and its defenseless con- 
dition was no secret to him. Two small works 
had been thrown up, forts Trumbull and Gris- 
wold ; but the former was open at the rear, and 
had a garrison of but twenty-three men, who were 
ordered to retreat to the other fort at the approach 
of danger. Colonel William Ledyard was in com- 
mand of both forts. Arnold's landing on the 
morning of September 6, 1781, seems to have 
been a surprise to every one in the town ; and his 
1,700 roen were at work on both sides of the river 
before any effective preparations could be made 
to meet him. Indeed, no such preparations could 
have been made, even with a day's notice ; there 
were no troops to draw upon. Fort Trumbull 
was taken with a rush : Ledyard drew in his men 
to Fort Griswold ; and while Arnold reserved to 
himself the congenial task of burning the town, 



THE STAMP ACT AND THE REVOLUTION. 313 

its dwellings, warehouses, and shipping, the next 
in command, on the other side of the river, was 
directed to storm Fort Griswold. 

The British soldier is a noble animal ; but the 
notion that he will not strike an enemy who is 
" down " should be relegated to the ante-Buffon- 
ian period of natural history. Badajos was nei- 
ther the first nor the last witness to the contrary ; 
and too many British officers have put on record 
their impressions of the British soldier in the mo- 
ment of victory for us to be surprised at such a 
little matter as happened at Fort Griswold. The 
unusual circumstance in this case was that the of- 
ficer in command was the greatest brute, appar- 
ently, of the storming party. After an obstinate 
resistance, in which Ledyard exhausted every 
means of defense, and all the British officers of 
high rank had been carried off dead or dying, the 
storming party, of which a Major Bromfield was 
now left in command, poured in. " Who com- 
mands this fort? " called Bromfield. "I did, sir ; 
but you do now," said Ledyard, offering his sword. 
Bromfield, infuriated by the unexpected slaugh- 
ter, seized the sword and plunged it into Led- 
yard's breast. With such an example from one 
in authority, the soldiers' instincts came out at 
their worst ; the defenders were bayoneted where- 
ever they sought refuge, until all but about twenty- 
five of the one hundred and fifty men in the fort 
were killed or desperately wounded. The fire of 
rage dying out for want of sound material, was 



314 CONNECTICUT. 

revived by the collection of the wounded ; and 
thirty-five of these were placed in a cart and 
rolled down the slope, among rocks and stumps, 
to be dashed to pieces at the bottom for the amuse- 
ment of the soldiers. The plea has been offered 
that the laws of war allowed military execution of 
the sort upon a fort which persisted in a hopeless 
defense; but this point of the laws of war has 
probably never been so strained before as in this 
case, and, in any event, the wounded have com- 
monly been held exempt. 

As Arnold passed out of New London harbor, 
the Revolutionary struggle passed away with him. 
It had been a time of sudden and tremendous 
growth, this transformation of the colony into a 
State, of the disappearance of old ideas and of old 
loyalty, of burnings and plunderings, of life-long 
separations through the fortune of war, of family 
and social disintegration, of heavy taxation amid 
stringent poverty, of great burdens manfully 
borne ; but the fancy is almost forced to picture, 
as the crowning episode of the war, the old com- 
monwealth sitting among the ruins which her re- 
creant son had wrought, and watching him as he 
sailed away to be worse and less than a foreigner 
to her forevermore. It may be only a natural 
shrinking from an unnatural crime, or it may be a 
remnant of ancient controversies, which has made 
the historians of Connecticut so careful to note the 
fact that Arnold was by blood a Rhode Island 
man. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 

The relations of Connecticut to the articles of 
confederation were peculiar. For a century and 
a half, the full energy of the commonwealth had 
been at work to maintain the autonomy secured 
by the charter, and to exclude from the soil of 
Connecticut every vestige of authority not owning 
the people of Connecticut as its legitimate source. 
From this standpoint, the articles, with their ex- 
press and tacit attempts to reserve and strengthen 
state sovereignty, were the exact representatives 
of Connecticut feeling. The vote in favor of them 
would have been practically unanimous in 1781, 
the year in which they went into effect. 

Other considerations soon compelled attention. 
One of the first results of the adoption of the ar- 
ticles, as has been stated, was the ousting of Con- 
necticut from her western claims, with the excep- 
tion of a reservation which seemed pitiful alongside 
of Virginia's royal reservation for the satisfaction 
of her debts and obligations. Instead of the main- 
tenance of vast claims in the Northwest, her busi- 
ness was now to secure her independence of her 



31 6 CONNECTICUT. 

nearer neighbors : and this was difficult enough. 
The desolation wrought by the Revolutionary con- 
flict, with the features peculiar to it in this quarter 
of America, was of continuing effect : the towns 
of the Connecticut coast were poverty-stricken, 
their merchants were bankrupt ; there was no 
energy to spare among the people for the revival 
of foreign commerce, and the imports of the State 
were of necessity made through Boston or New 
York. Here they found no amicable treatment, 
under the provisions of the articles of confedera- 
tion which allowed each State to levy taxes on im- 
ports. Something like one third of the expenses 
of the New York government were paid by taxa- 
tion levied so as to be borne by imports into Con- 
necticut ; even this burden was not enough to de- 
velop a domestic commerce in the subordinate State; 
and the only resource available was the poor one 
of turning to pay, in like manner, one third of the 
expenses of the Massachusetts government. State 
sovereignty was very fine in theory ; but a state 
sovereignty bottomed on the sole power of the 
State was found by Connecticut to be a very poor 
resource for her. It was not long before the lead- 
ing minds of Connecticut were ready to give up 
this naked and deceptive state sovereignty for 
state rights, bottomed on the guaranty of a na- 
tional power. 

In February, 1781, just before the articles actu- 
ally went into effect, congress notified the States 



ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 317 

that it would be absolutely necessary for them to 
surrender to congress a limited power to levy taxes 
on imports, in order to satisfy the public debt. It 
was essential that every state legislature should 
agree to this, and the assent of Connecticut, with 
all but one of the other States, was balked by the 
veto of the smallest of the States, Rhode Island. 
Before Rhode Island could be reasoned with, Vir- 
ginia repealed her assenting act, and the veto 
was made more positive. For the next half-dozen 
years the position of Connecticut was unchanged : 
her people, instinctively willing for national taxa- 
tion, were moved by what may seem an unreason- 
able jealousy of the Society of the Cincinnati, and 
were unwilling to see a national taxing power 
under its control or in its interest. For this, how- 
ever, there was some excuse. The feeling of the 
military authorities toward the privates of the 
Revolutionary armies would seem odd to men of 
the present day. To Washington, for example, it 
was always the officers who were the " gentlemen 
of the army ; " the privates were food for powder, 
well enough off with rations, clothes, and glory. 
When " half-pay for the army " was proposed by 
congress in 1778, it was only for the commissioned 
officers; $80 apiece in continental money at the 
end of the war was thought a quite liberal provi- 
sion for the insignificant privates. It may very 
easily be seen that such notions as these were not 
likely to be popular in an ultra-democratic State 



318 CONNECTICUT. 

like Connecticut ; and it is probable that her Rev- 
olutionary privates were as bitter in their opposi- 
tion to the Society of the Cincinnati as those who 
had not entered the army at all. It was not " the 
old leaven of Silas Deane," as Hamilton thought, 
but the instincts of democracy, that fought against 
caste distinctions in the army, as elsewhere. 

In April, 1783, a still more limited proposition 
to grant taxing powers to congress, with a recom- 
mendation to change the basis of contribution from 
land to number of inhabitants, was sent out to the 
States. Connecticut assented at once, with New 
Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Virginia, 
North and South Carolina ; but the other States 
assented so slowly or so grudgingly that the proposi- 
tion hung fire. When New York gave it the coup 
de grace in 1786, Connecticut had been on the side 
of the proposed reformation in every vote. She sent 
no representatives to the Annapolis Convention of 
1786 ; and Knox attributes her neglect or refusal 
to " jealousy." With all respect to his judgment, 
i^ must be noted that the meeting of that body 
took place in the height of the an ti- Cincinnati ex- 
citement ; that this seed of discontent was removed 
before the Philadelphia Convention met ; and that 
Connecticut's delegates to that body showed that 
her previous "jealousy" had been of a nature to 
which neither Knox nor any other typical Revolu- 
tionary officer could do substantial justice, much 
less deal kindly with it. 



ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 319 

In May, 1787, the general assembly of Connec- 
ticut appointed William Samuel Johnson, Roger 
Sherman, and Oliver Ellsworth delegates to the 
federal convention at Philadelphia, with instruc- 
tions to meet the delegates of the other States, and 
" to discuss upon such alterations and provisions, 
agreeably to the general principles of republican 
government, as they shall think proper to render 
the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies 
of government and the preservation of the Union." 
The convention met May 14 ; a majority of the 
States were ready for business May 25 ; and Ells- 
| worth attended May 28, Sherman May 30, and 
I Johnson June 2. From the first appearance of 
i Ellsworth the Connecticut delegation was in the 
\ thick of every struggle. It has been said that its 
I members " aspired to act as mediators " in the 
i convention ; if so, the aspiration was justified by its 
j fruits, for the ability of the delegates was reinforced 
\ by the peculiar position of their State. Sherman, 
1 though of Massachusetts by birth, was of that 
I family which has always been strong in the Con- 
| necticut Valley, and has since blossomed into new 
j power in Ohio. Johnson, of the Stratford blood 
j which had introduced Episcopacy into Connecticut, 
was yet a devoted and trusted Whig throughout 
the Revolution. Ellsworth, subsequently chief 
justice of the United States and of his State, was 
of a Windsor family. The three were probably 
the ablest lawyers in the State, represented all 



320 CONNECTICUT. 

shades of opinion in it, and all its territorial divi- 
sions, and were united only in the desire for a 
good national government. No interest in the 
State could claim more than one of them ; they be- 
longed to the whole State and to the Union. 

The attitude of Connecticut has been repre- 
sented as that of a " small State," intent only on 
obtaining every possible reservation of state sover- 
eignty. Such a representation is grossly unfair. 
There was no reason for it a priori. The State 
had nothing to gain by it. Her territorial limits 
were distinctly closed for the future ; and she was 
wisely and justly determined that the new govern- 
ment should not take the form proposed by Vir- 
ginia, a congress of two houses, both chosen by the 
States in direct proportion to population, with a 
president and judiciary appointed by this congress, 
so that a caucus, or " deal," by a few large States 
would give them absolute control of the govern- 
ment in all its branches. This latter proposition 
would in reality have been the greatest of calami- 
ties for a real development of national spirit and 
power. Connecticut desired a sound and practical 
national government, and the path to it was 
marked out for her delegates by their own com- 
monwealth's development and history for one hun- 
dred and fifty years. 

Through this long period, Connecticut had been 
the only colony, with the exception of Rhode 
Island (unrepresented in this convention), which 



ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 321 

Lad had a governor and council, chosen by majority 
vote and by almost universal suffrage ; her dele- 
gates were therefore quite prepared for the pro- 
position that at least a part of the new federal 
government should be chosen in much the same 
way. On the other hand, in the development of 
new towns, Connecticut had always been careful 
to maintain the substantial equality of each town- 
ship in at least- one branch of her government ; 
her delegates were therefore quite prepared for the 
proposition that at least a part of the new federal 
government should similarly recognize the equality 
of the States. Her combination of commonwealth 
and town rights had worked so simply and natu- 
rally that her delegates were quite prepared to 
suggest a similar combination of national and state 
rights as the foundation of the new government. 
The circumstances were enough to clear their 
mental vision, to enable them to look calmly and 
judiciously at every new proposition, and to make 
them real " mediators." This is the crowning 
glory of the system which Hooker inaugurated 
in the wilderness, and of the commonwealth of 
Connecticut. For a century and a half, she had 
been maintaining the rudimentary form of that 
mixture of the national and federal elements which 
are now united in our federal government and give 
it its strength. This system had bred up a race of 
public men who were accustomed to it. Their 
chosen men went as delegates to the convention, 

21 



322 CONNECTICUT. 

and were urged at every step in the line which 
Hooker had marked out for them, and which their 
commonwealth had been making straight for them 
for a hundred and fifty years. It is hardly too 
much to say that the birth of the constitution was 
merely the grafting of the Connecticut system on 
the stock of the old confederation, where it has 
grown into richer luxuriance than Hooker could 
ever have dreamed of. 

The proceedings of the convention, in dealing 
with the legislative, executive, and judicial ele- 
ments of the constitution, are so voluminous and 
complicated, and Sherman, Ellsworth, and Johnson 
made up so large a part of almost every debate, 
that the reader of the convention's proceedings 
may easily become confused, and will be apt to 
conclude that, able as these men were, they simply 
contributed detached portions of the work ; and 
thus the essential service of the Connecticut com- 
monwealth may be altogether lost sight of. It is 
far better to fix the attention on one point of time^ 
the most critical, perhaps, of the convention, and 
thus to see how the whole force which had been 
accumulating for one hundred and fifty years came 
in at the right time to turn the convention into the 
exact track which made permanent success pos- 
sible, against the desires of the mass of the mem- 
bers. It should be remembered, also, that Con- 
necticut delegates had strong grounds of appeal to 
the confidence of their fellows through the course 



ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 323 

of the commonwealth in the public affairs of the 
previous half-dozen years. She was evidently dis- 
interested, with no selfish schemes to work for and 
no selfish object to gain. Her population gave 
her respect in the eyes of the large States. Hei 
democracy gave the small States confidence in her. 
Her position was one of unusual advantage ; but 
it would have been worthless but for the long years 
of preparation which had been begun in the three 
little towns on the banks of the Connecticut. 

The two plans which came to the front in the 
opening hours of the convention — the " Virginia 
Plan," presented by Randolph, and the " Jersey 
Plan," presented by Patterson — are usually de- 
scribed as respectively the " National " and the 
" State Sovereignty " plans. Nothing could be 
more misleading than such a classification ; neither 
had anything of the spirit of nationality in it. The 
Virginia plan, giving control of both houses of 
congress to numbers, and control of the executive 
and judiciary to the two houses, was merely a 
scheme to secure the bulk of the spoils to the com- 
bination of a few large States ; the Jersey plan, 
continuing the articles of confederation, with the 
power of coercing insubordinate States, was a 
counter-scheme to insure the safety of the small 
States against the large ones. The futility of the 
appellation " national " may be seen in the disgust 
with which the large-State men looked at their own 
plan when Connecticut had forced a really national 



324 CONNECTICUT. 

element into it. They no longer loved their off- 
spring. 

The discussion of the two plans ran on through 
the month of June. Between the two parties, and 
belonging to neither, was Connecticut, and her 
unswerving position was first made public on the 
11th of June. Here were two sets of States: one 
voting steadily for proportional representation in 
both of two houses, the other voting as steadily for 
a single house and absolute State equality in that. 
In the first class were usually Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South 
Carolina, and Georgia; in the second, New York, 
New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. It is odd 
that great expectations of coining immigration 
kept the Southern States in the column of " large " 
States, while New York, without a thought of her 
coming western expansion, posed contentedly as a 
" small " State. The discussions of the successive 
items of the rival plans were conducted daily in 
committee of the whole house, and Connecticut 
seized the opportunity to declare her position, June 
11. On motion of Sherman, slightly amended by 
King, it was voted that representation in the first 
branch of the national legislature should be pro- 
portional, not equal. This was a "large State". 
proposition, but Connecticut voted for it, placing 
herself in the large-State column, and making the 
vote seven in favor, three against, and one (Mary* 
land) divided. Then Sherman, seconded bv his 



ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 325 

own colleague Ellsworth, as if to make the attitude 
of their State more pronounced, moved that each 
State have a vote in the second branch (the sen- 
ate). This was a practical incorporation of the 
small-State proposition, and the large States voted 
it down, six to five. From this time on, the pro- 
position of State equality in the upper, and pro- 
portionate representation in the lower house of 
congress was renewed again and again by the Con- 
necticut delegates, was commonly cited as u the 
Connecticut proposal," and was regularly voted 
down by six to five until July 2. This steady 
vote of Connecticut with the small States made 
that a minority not to be disregarded ; and, as 
passion rose higher until a public threat was made 
that the small States would confederate and find a 
foreign power which would take them by the hand 
for their protection, the cool, deliberate, and per- 
sistently offered compromise of Connecticut be- 
came harder to resist. On the 2d of July, the 
large-State delegates showed the first symptoms of 
breaking, by referring the Connecticut proposal to 
a committee of one from each State. We have no 
means of knowing the proceedings of the commit- 
tee, but they must have been interesting. It is 
only known that Franklin's influence was cast for 
the Connecticut proposal ; and that it was reported 
favorably, July 5. The report met a storm of 
opposition. Madison " only restrained himself 
from animadverting on the report from the re* 



326 CONNECTICUT. 

spect he bore to the members of the committee.' 1 
Wilson angrily exclaimed that the committee had 
exceeded their powers. On the 7th of July, North 
Carolina came over to the Connecticut proposal, and 
the report of the committee was at last adopted 
by a vote of six States for it, Pennsylvania, Vir- 
ginia, and South Carolina against it, and Massa- 
chusetts and Georgia divided. The great question 
was settled, and the Connecticut proposal went on 
the 26th of July to a committee of detail, which 
reported the constitution of the senate, much as it 
was finally adopted. 

With this achievement, Connecticut's work in 
the convention was really finished. Her delegates 
constantly lent the great weight of their legal 
ability and strong common sense, reinforced by 
the general confidence in them, to the subsequent 
debates ; but their leadership, assumed unwillingly 
and only from a sense of duty, was dropped as 
soon as the occasion which called for it was over. 
The system of complete local liberty, with a 
limited but concentrated central power, under 
which the Connecticut river towns had filled out 
their boundaries and had struggled desperately 
but vainly for expansion abroad, had passed into 
a wider field, where it was to have a wider success. 
Governor Huntington was a hearty supporter of 
the proposed constitution ; the assembly unani- 
mously called a convention to consider it ; and 
that body met at Hartford, and ratified the consti- 



ADOPTION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 327 

tution, January 9, 1788, by a vote of one hundred 
and twenty-eight to forty. Ellsworth and John- 
son received the deserved honor of being chosen as 
the State's first representatives in the senate of the 
United States; and the commonwealth of Con- 
necticut became merged in the greater common- 
wealth of the United States, its own lineal suc- 
cessor. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 

The development of Connecticut under the 
constitution has been a curious but natural conse- 
quence of her preceding history. All her institu- 
tions had tended to the development of an abound- 
ing individualism among her people. Thrown 
into any situation, a Connecticut party set at once 
about organizing civil government, and the indi- 
vidual began the promptest and most efficient pre- 
parations for taking care of himself. It was the 
institutions of the commonwealth, not any wonder- 
ful or elaborate system of common schools, that 
made the people of Connecticut what they were ; 
for the hopes of early years, for a thorough com- 
mon-school system, have only been realized in 
recent times. Until the new era in popular edu- 
cation came in, the ordinary Connecticut citizen 
had what would now be considered a very meagre 
education ; but he had something much better in 
the thoroughly learned lesson of looking out for 
himself. Further, the constant application of this 
lesson, under the necessities of the people, had de- 
veloped the class of what are often called " house- 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 329 

hold industries " very considerably before the close 
of the last century. Farmers and their sons did 
not lose the evenings or rainy days : these were 
spent in making nails and other iron products, or 
anything which would sell. All this, continued 
through generations, took the place of the techni- 
cal education which is now finding its way into 
our school systems. The consequence has been, 
during the last seventy years, the development of 
the modern Connecticut mechanic out of the Con- 
necticut agriculturist of the last century, and the 
transformation of the commonwealth into a great 
industrial community. 

The devastation of the Revolution had rather 
checked than stopped the internal development of 
the commonwealth. New towns were erected even 
during the heat of the war, and while so many of 
the old towns were under plunder and fire; and 
the attainment of peace was like the throwing 
down of a dam — the new towns numbering two 
in 1784, five in 1785, thirteen in 1786, and ten be- 
tween that year and the close of the century. It 
was estimated by the convention of 1787 that the 
State then had a population of 202,000, exceeded 
only by Virginia (600,000), Massachusetts 
(352,000), Pennsylvania (341,000), Maryland, 
(254,000), and New York (238,000). In the as- 
signment of representatives in congress before the 
first census, ten were given to Virginia, eight each 
to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, six to New 



330 CONNECTICUT. 

York and Maryland, and Connecticut, North Caro- 
lina, and South Carolina were put on a level with 
five each. When the first census was taken it was 
found that the population of the State was 237,946, 
making its rank eighth among the States. The 
second census, in 1800, gave it the same relative 
rank with a population of 251,002. 

Almost all the interests of this population were 
agricultural. The commonwealth was not that 
scene of busy activity which it is to-day, with 
streams of raw material pouring into it from every 
side, springs of manufactured product bubbling 
up in every acre, and outflowing in freight bound 
to every part of the world. In 1790, the activity 
was altogether local. The whole commonwealth 
was dotted with towns ; but these were the little 
centres of small agricultural circles, with very 
little surplus for exportation beyond that which 
was necessary for the support of their own people. 
The green in the heart of the town had its church, 
and leading to it was a street, with wooden houses, 
usually comfortable, but often unpainted, and sel- 
dom representing any great amount of luxury. 
Each local circle was able to raise most of what 
was needed for its people ; exchanges among the 
people made up special deficiencies ; and the peri- 
patetic tailor, shoemaker, or other workmen com- 
pleted whatever was lacking in the simple life of 
a simple people. Pay was still usually in kind, 
so that each little circle was able to keep its own 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 331 

affairs in motion without much reference to its 
neighbors. When any unusual surplus was to be 
exported, it was put into some shape, such as 
cattle, which could be most easily transported. 
Mules for the Southern or West Indian market 
were a common form ; and a drove of mules on its 
journey was very likely to be a Connecticut pro- 
duct. The story is told of John Randolph, that, 
seeing a drove of mules passing through Washing- 
ton, he pointed it out to Tracy, one of the Con- 
necticut senators, and said, in his genial way, 
" Tracy, there go a lot of your constituents." 
" Ye-es," said Tracy, " going down to Virginia 
to teach school." 

If the occupations of the people were agricul- 
tural, their institutions went far to insure them 
against any of that tendency toward stagnation 
which had long been associated with the common 
notion of purely agricultural peoples. The Con- 
necticut citizen of the early years of this century 
was a busy man, in some respects, for the common- 
wealth or the town was continually calling on him 
to take part in political life. Let us try to follow 
out the political relations of the citizen before the 
adoption of the constitution of 1818. Most of his 
public concerns were with the town. He had 
gained a legal residence there by being born in it, 
by being received by a vote of some town meeting, 
by the approval of the selectmen, the town's ex- 
ecutive committee, or by being chosen to some 



332 CONNECTICUT. 

office by the town. Unless having thus acquired 
residence, he was in the town only on sufferance. 
If there had been any reason to apprehend that he 
would become a charge on the town, it would have 
been the duty of the selectmen to send him to his 
own town if he had one in the State, to send him 
out of the State if he belonged to another State, or 
to hold his entertainer responsible for him. Sup- 
posing him to have acquired residence, he had be- 
come a voter, on arriving at the age of twenty-one, 
by reason of having a freehold estate of an annual 
value of $ 7, or a personal estate on the tax list of 
$134, by being approved by the selectmen as a 
person of good moral character, and by taking 
the freeman's oath. Twice a year, as a voter, he 
attended the town elections for representatives 
in the general assembly, at which also the new 
voters formally took the freeman's oath. At the 
September meeting, he, with all the other freemen 
of the State, voted for twenty names, as candidates 
for the council or upper house of the assembly, at 
the election to follow in April. The total number 
of votes cast for all persons was transmitted by 
the town officers to the assembly ; that body 
counted them and published the twenty names 
which stood highest on the whole vote of the State ; 
and at the election in April, when the freemen 
came to vote for representatives again, he voted 
for twelve of the published list to be of the council 
for the following year. In May, the general as- 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 333 

sembly counted the April vote from all the towns, 
and announced the names of the fortunate twelve 
who stood highest and were elected. After cast- 
ing his votes for the council, the freeman voted for 
governor, lieutenant-governor, secretary, and treas- 
urer ; and the votes were sent in like manner to 
Hartford, to be counted in May under direction 
of the assembly. Members of congress were 
chosen in the same way as councilors. The free- 
men voted for eighteen names in April ; the assem- 
bly counted the votes in May, and declared the 
eighteen names which stood highest ; the freemen 
voted for seven of these eighteen in September ; 
and the assembly declared the seven elect in the 
following month. Such were the limitations which 
the popular vote had imposed upon itself under 
the charter. 

The occasion of counting the votes was still 
known by its primitive name of the general elec- 
tion, though it had long ceased to be anything 
more than a canvass of votes already cast, and now 
returned to the general assembly as a canvass- 
ing body. Until about 1836 it was an occasion 
of solemn import and unusual magnificence. The 
governor, if he was not a Hartford man, was met 
on the outskirts of the capital, the day before that 
of the great ceremonial, by a company of cavalry, 
and escorted to his lodgings. When he was noti- 
fied, on the next morning, that the representa- 
tives had organized and chosen their speaker, he 



334 CONNECTICUT. 

and they, with the council, the sheriffs of the 
whole commonwealth with white staves, and the 
clergy, marched in procession to the first church, 
escorted by the governor's foot-guards and horse- 
guards. At the church, the election sermon was 
delivered by the preacher appointed for that ser- 
vice. It was no brief or trivial performance. The 
election sermon of President Stiles, in 1783, made 
up 120 pages of about 300 words each, though he 
certainly added matter before publication. At the 
end of the church services the procession returned 
to the state house ; the votes were counted by a 
committee of the assembly ; the governor, lieu- 
tenant-governor, secretary, treasurer, and coun- 
cil for the year were announced, and the general 
election was over. An election ball occupied the 
evening. The theory of the commonwealth still 
was, until 1818, that our supposititious voter was 
present and voting for commonwealth officers ; 
but it had long since ceased to be the case. He 
made one of the spectators occasionally ; but, as a 
rule, he heard of the festivities from others. 

The town was the political body which came 
nearest him. Its annual meeting fell in Decem- 
ber, when town officers were chosen ; and a formi- 
dable list it was and still is. There were select- 
men not more than seven in number, a town 
clerk, a town treasurer, constables, surveyors of 
highways, fence-viewers, listers, collectors, leather- 
sealers, grand jurors, tithing-men, hay -wards, 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 335 

chimney- viewers, gaugers, packers, and sealers of 
weights and measures, besides any other officers 
whom the peculiar circumstances of the town re- 
quired. Many of these offices have since fallen 
from their once high estate, and combinations of 
voters are sometimes formed with the improper 
purpose of choosing unseemly persons to fill 
them ; but in their time they were both ancient 
and honorable. At all events, the multitude of 
offices and the annual term of office together 
made the opportunities of public service exceed- 
ingly numerous, and the prohibition against refus- 
ing office under penalty of fine in default of good 
excuse, brought all citizens into the supply of 
available material for public service. One conse- 
quence was, that there were few freemen of Con- 
necticut who passed through life without at some 
time filling an office on the summons of their fel- 
lows. The town meeting, properly warned and 
limited in its action to the subjects specified in the 
warning, was a political school in which the free- 
man received his training ; the multitude of minor 
offices provided higher courses for almost all the 
freemen ; and from the two together the people 
received an uncommonly good political education 
and a sense of personal interest in public affairs. 

After all, the main features of the system were 
the town meeting, the constables, and the select- 
men. The democratic element was supplied by 
the town meeting; the element of dictatorship, 



336 CONNECTICUT. 

which seems to lurk somewhere in democracy, 
was in the selectmen ; and the constables repre- 
sented the commonwealth. The powers of the 
town meeting were rather more clearly defined 
than those of the selectmen, probably for the rea- 
son that the latter could be held to a stricter per- 
sonal responsibility. The town meeting repre- 
sented the popular force ; when it adjourned, the 
selectmen were almost the autocrats of the town 
until the next town meeting. It is worthy of note 
that such powers have so seldom been abused or 
betrayed, and that men, often active business 
men, could have been found for more than two 
centuries, as they still are found, to manage with- 
out fee or reward the complicated, difficult, and 
sometimes dangerous affairs of a Connecticut 
town. 

The registration of births, marriages, and deaths 
was with the town clerk ; licenses to marry came 
from him ; and deeds and leases of lands within 
the township were registered with him. The pro- 
bate judge was a town officer ; and the mass of 
business of this nature, a county affair outside of 
the influence of the New England system, was 
here purely a town matter. Indeed, it may quite 
safely be said that about all the relations which 
the citizen holds to the county in other States 
than those of New England, and very many of the 
relations which he holds to the State itself, he 
held in Connecticut to the town only. His little 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 337 

town republic hemmed him and his interests in on 
every side, and it was but seldom that he became 
conscious that there was a larger and a still larger 
republic which also claimed his allegiance and in- 
terest. 

It must not be supposed that the description of 
the Connecticut freeman's political position in 
1810 is vitally incorrect for his successor of 1887. 
It has been altered mainly by the increase in the 
number of cities, — New Haven, Hartford, Bridge- 
port, Norwich, Waterbury, Middletown, Meriden, 
New London, and South Norwalk, — with their 
introduction of stronger municipal powers, and by 
the erection of " boroughs," or semi-cities, in the 
more thickly settled portions of the townships. 
All these steps are detractions from the original 
powers of the towns, and are a tendency to diminish 
the citizen's dependence on the township. They 
have not yet been very serious, though attempts 
to extend the drift in this direction are often re- 
newed. The essential thing to be remembered is, 
that changes in the commonwealth's constitution 
have affected the status of the towns very little. 
The original constitution was changed into the 
charter, and this into the constitution of 1818 ; 
but these changes were mainly of the common- 
wealth, and the relative position or the absolute 
powers of the towns were hardly changed by any 
of them. To a remarkable degree the relations 
of the Connecticut citizen to his town are the 



338 CONNECTICUT. 

same as those of his forefather when the first 
towns were planted. More than in any other 
New England State, the original vigor of the Con- 
necticut town has enabled it to keep pace with 
the growing power of the commonwealth. 

Hartford and New Haven were cities at the be- 
ginning of the century, having been incorporated 
in 1784, but both were very far from our notions 
of a city. They were little centres of less than 
4,000 population, and the communication between 
them for passengers, mails, and traffic was sup- 
plied by two stages a week, leaving on Wednes- 
days and Saturdays. Each had a few weekly 
newspapers, some shops with a very miscellane- 
ous stock in trade, and hardly any other evi- 
dence of city life. Incomes were derived, even in 
the cities, directly or mediately, from agriculture 
for the most part, and they were not large : it was 
rumored, with some natural hesitation, that Pier- 
pont Edwards, the commonwealth's leading law- 
yer, enjoyed a revenue of $2,000 per annum from 
his practice, but this could not be taken as a stand- 
ard. There were few who were very rich, and 
few who were very poor ; and the life of the whole 
commonwealth was a little fuller than, but almost 
as equable and placid as when there were but 
three towns in it. Banks and insurance companies 
came into existence only during the twenty years 
1790-1810. 

New Haven had an advantage over Hartford in 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 339 

its foreign commerce, which had begun to revive 
before the Revolutionary war, and had received 
a further impetus from the peace. Its " Long 
Wharf," 3,500 feet in length, whose greedy maw 
had swallowed all that private enterprise, lotteries, 
and commonwealth aid could offer it, was not fin- 
ished until after 1802 ; but it was in active use 
long before it could be called finished, and it was 
the headquarters of foreign trade. Its merchants 
had their own local spirit, and their "wharf law" 
for the punishment of local offenses; and their 
ships went all over the world, hardly any of them 
returning without a contribution of material for the 
wharf. Thence sailed Isaac Hull, as the captain 
of a New Haven West Indiaman, long before he 
thought of meeting the Guerriere. Thither came 
the Neptune in 1799, with the richest cargo yet 
imported, its profits being a quarter of a million, 
and the duties on the cargo being nearly 870,000. 
And here came out again the old feeling of the 
" town-born " against the " interlopers," who had 
come into the town to share in its prosperity. It 
is said that one of the town-born New Haven cap- 
tains, being forced to a jetson during a storm at 
sea, cautioned his men to throw over only the 
goods of " interlopers." But the influence of the 
college, with that of foreign commerce and result- 
ing wealth, did much to raise New Haven above 
the general level of the commonwealth ; and city 
life in the modern sense had its closest approxi- 



340 CONNECTICUT. 

mation here. The town poor were no longer sold 
at auction. Geese and cattle were banished from 
the Green, and that part of the city began to take 
on some of the beauty which has since made it so 
notable a spot. The city went a step beyond its 
contemporaries in beginning a cemetery on modern 
lines, abandoning the nakedly ugly New England 
burying-ground. There was even an earnest but 
vain effort to obtain a permanent supply of water 
in 1804. 

While Hartford was in most respects more pro- 
vincial than its rival, having only a small trade in 
West India rum and molasses, its atmosphere was 
for some reasons much more literary. Perhaps 
some of this tendency came from its more frequent 
communication with the outside world, through its 
natural position as a stopping-place on the road 
from New York to Boston. Since 1772, a stage 
passed each way once a week. Here were the 
writers so long known collectively as " the Hart- 
ford wits," Lemuel Hopkins, Humphreys, Alsop, 
Trumbull, the author of " McFingal," and Theo- 
dore D wight, a younger brother of Dr. D wight; 
here they were succeeded by Percival, Brainard, 
and Mrs. Sigourney, followed by the more recent 
writers who have maintained Hartford's position 
in the world of secular literature ; and here were 
always strong ministers, able successors of the 
leaders of the first migration. Noah Webster was 
as yet known rather 'as a grammarian than as a 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 341 

lexicographer. Connecticut society, however, was 
strongly tinged with a curious provincialism in 
the times about 1800. Things were done and 
said without special criticism which would nowa- 
days be thought unpardonable. The pastor of the 
First Church was Nathan Strong, the writer of the 
hymn so familiar in our hymn-books, " Swell the 
anthem, raise the song." In 1790 he and one of 
the leading members of his flock entered into part- 
nership for the purpose of managing a distillery. 
The enterprise was a failure ; and, as imprison- 
ment for debt was still the law, the junior partner 
prudently sought refuge outside of the common- 
wealth's jurisdiction. The ministerial partner, 
however, stood his ground, remaining within doors 
on week-days, and appearing on Sundays, when 
the writ did not run, to minister to his indulgent 
parishioners. When the financial difficulty had 
been settled, the pastor's troubles were over. He 
continued his ministry until his death in 1816, 
and was made a doctor of divinity by the College 
of New Jersey in 1801. And the poems of the 
Hartford wits, largely devoted to political strug- 
gles, have in them a great deal more of the blud- 
geon than of the rapier. One must speculate on 
the mental constitutions of the audience which 
could cut out a high niche for the author of such 
poetry as this, which was to be sung to a famil- 
iar hymn-tune, as the first of a dozen similar 
stanzas, describing a Democratic meeting : — 



342 CONNECTICUT. 

Ye tribes of Faction, join — 

Your daughters and your wives ; 
Moll Cary 's come to dine, 
And dance with Deacon Ives. 
Ye ragged throng 
Of Democrats, 
As thick as rats, 
Come join the song. 

Sporadic efforts had been made in the agricul- 
tural districts of the State to introduce some pro- 
ducts which should be more profitable than the 
cereals which were the staple. The silk-culture 
had been introduced about 1732, and in 1747 
Governor Law wore the first coat and stockings 
made of New England silk. In 1758 the work 
was taken up by President Stiles of Yale, and by 
Dr. Aspinwall of Mansfield. The former wrote 
up the industry, and wore gowns of Connecticut 
silk at Commencement ; the latter put the indus- 
try at Mansfield and its neighborhood on a foun- 
dation which has not since been lost. One of its 
outgrowths has been the silk-works developed by 
the mechanical and artistic genius of the brothers 
Cheney, at Manchester, near Hartford, beginning 
in a modest attempt to make the lower grades of 
silk, and rising to higher grades through the inven- 
tion of improved machinery. 

Attempts had been made since about 1736 to 
introduce woolen manufactures as a development 
of sheep-raising, and these were revived after the 
Revolution. With help from the general assembly, 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 343 

a manufactory of woolens was established at 
Hartford after the peace. Its product was mainly 
of the pepper-and-salt variety, but it was good and 
popular ; and a suit of the factory's broadcloth 
was worn by President Washington at the open- 
ing of Congress in 1790. In 1802 a long step was 
taken in advance. David Humphreys, of Derby, 
formerly Washington's aide, now American min- 
ister to Spain, sent home a flock of one hundred 
merino sheep. The improved wool soon built up 
a manufactory at Humphreysville, near Derby ; 
and a suit of broadcloth from it was worn by 
President Madison at his inauguration in 1809. 
From this beginning, the industry has grown and 
flourished in the State ; and it had not gone far 
before its influence was felt in politics. 

The Connecticut delegates in the Convention of 
1787 had claimed that theirs was even then a 
manufacturing State. This was rather a desire 
than a fact. Since the time of Winthrop, whose 
attainments in natural science had led him all over 
the commonwealth in the effort to establish an 
iron - manufacture, this branch of industry had 
been carried on with more or less success. One 
of the first ventures at New Haven had been the 
establishment of the " iron workes ; " and the 
erection of furnaces was encouraged by the as- 
sembly and by towns, through remission of taxes 
and otherwise, all through the eighteenth century. 
In 1716 the State encouraged the erection of a 



344 CONNECTICUT. 

slitting-mill by Fitch & Co. by giving it a legal 
monopoly of the business for fifteen years. But, 
after all, the normal condition of iron produc- 
tion was that of a household industry. Each fur- 
nace was meant to furnish enough iron for a 
neighborhood ; and the people of the neighbor- 
hood, using the intervals from agricultural employ- 
ment in winter or at night, converted the iron into 
articles for domestic use, with a surplus of such 
things as nails for exportation. There was not 
yet enough stimulus in the industry to affect the 
purely agricultural character of the community 
seriously, but it was a preparation for the future. 
The development of the iron district of the 
northwestern part of Connecticut, about 1730, 
had been carried to a considerable extent before 
the Revolution, and it seemed likely to make the 
commonwealth a mining and manufacturing com- 
munity. The deposits in Salisbury and its vicin- 
ity were abundant, and the supply of wood, then 
the universal fuel, was plentiful. Encouraged by 
the Revolution, the production became of great 
importance. The cannon for the army and navy, 
the heavy chains which barred the rivers, the ma- 
terials for gun-barrels and other military equip- 
ments for the Revolutionary armies, came from 
the works at Salisbury, which were never reached 
by the enemy. The workmen considered the 
Salisbury iron superior to anything else which 
could be obtained, at home or from abroad, and 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 345 

its imputation seems to have been deserved. It is 
still highly valued, and 88,000 tons of it were pro- 
duced in 1880. Valuable as was the supply, it 
was not destined to work a revolution in the eco- 
nomic life of the people. When the time came 
for the real race, it was found that other States 
had a superior advantage in the bounty of nature, 
which had combined their iron-beds with adjacent 
beds of coal ; and Connecticut was compelled to 
yield to circumstances and turn to other industries. 
Before the final industrial revolution came on, 
the commonwealth was convulsed by a political 
revolution, caused partially by the first movements 
of manufactures, and in its turn a moving cause of 
subsequent developments. Connecticut had been 
Federalist from the first, and the Connecticut 
Federalist had become almost a peculiar type. 
Many influences aided the development. The al- 
most exclusively agricultural employment of the 
people rendered them very susceptible to the per- 
sonal influence of leading men, and community 
of religious belief strengthened this influence. 
The leading men were often connected directly or 
indirectly with commercial interests, which were 
patronized by the Federal party : or they were 
leaders in the Congregational Established Church, 
the natural enemy of Jeffersonian doctrine and 
prejudices. The new Democratic party therefore 
found in Connecticut a phalanx impenetrable to 
all its efforts to move it. Jefferson's attempt to 



346 CONNECTICUT. 

establish a governmental influence in the State in 
1801, by removing Elizur Goodrich, the Federal- 
ist collector of the port of New Haven, and ap- 
pointing in his place Samuel Bishop, the vener- 
able father of a rising young Democratic politi- 
cian, merely made the Connecticut Federalists 
furious without converting them ; and their feel- 
ing was increased by the embargo, which shut up 
eighty vessels in the harbor of New Haven alone, 
and nearly ruined the commerce of the port. Even 
after the national downfall of the Federal party 
in 1800, when other States yielded and chose 
Democratic electors, Connecticut and Delaware 
were the only States which chose Federal electors 
at every presidential election, so long as there 
were Federalists to vote for. 

The Episcopal Church had begun to raise its 
head again after the Revolution, though it was 
still feeble. Every such symptom of revival, of 
course, seemed to the Congregationalist Whig 
simply a revival of Toryism. When the Episco- 
palians and other dissatisfied elements in New 
Haven won a substantial victory at the first city 
election in 1784, Dr. Stiles's diary takes it as a 
victory of the Tories, and adds, as a natural result 
the next month, " this day town- meeting voted to 
re-admit the Tories." The connection with Tory- 
ism became dimmed in time ; but the grievances 
of the dissatisfied element, the Episcopalians, the 
" New Lights," the Sandemanians, and other secta- 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 347 

ries, remained unabated. In 1791, the act which 
seemed to Congregationalists the summit of reli- 
gious freedom was passed : it allowed any dissent- 
ing society to tax for the support of its own min- 
ister, and remitted the town tax to such as should 
lodge a certificate of their dissenting membership 
with the clerk of an Established Church. This 
was far from satisfactory to the dissenters. They 
were discontented that all persons not members of 
any church were still subject to taxation for the ex- 
clusive benefit of the Established Church ; they as- 
serted that the privilege of certificate was thwarted 
by the authorities on little or no legal pretext; 
and they complained that the treasury of the com- 
monwealth was still put by the assembly at the 
service of Yale College, to the exclusion of any 
other denominational interest. 

Finding that the dissenters were not content 
with what had no doubt seemed large concessions, 
and welded together more strongly by the national 
supremacy of their opponents and the ruinous 
embargo policy, the dominant party of Connecti- 
cut redoubled its resistance to change. The Con- 
necticut Democrats considered the charter, re- 
adopted in 1776 by the assembly, as the corner- 
stone of their opponents' power. It had, they 
said, left the powers of government so undefined 
that the upper house, or council, consisting of 
but twelve members, had gained an. extreme influ- 
ence ; that seven of the council, a majority, were 



348 CONNECTICUT. 

lawyers, able to " appoint all the judges, plead 
before those judges, and constitute themselves a 
supreme court of errors to decide in the last resort 
oh the laws of their own making ; " and that these 
same men had complete control of the election 
machinery of the State. They demanded a con- 
stitution under which the legislative, judicial, and 
executive powers should be separated. In August, 
1804, a convention of Democrats, or Republicans, 
was held at New Haven, and endorsed the pro- 
gramme for the autumn elections. The Federal 
majority rose higher than ever, and the assembly 
at its first meeting took steps to punish those mal- 
contents whom it could reach. It deprived of 
their commissions five justices of the peace who 
had been delegates to the New Haven Convention, 
and censured one of its own members who had 
spoken too warmly in their behalf. The offending 
member, when called upon to rise and receive his 
reprimand from the speaker, interposed the in- 
genious point of order that there was no rule to 
prevent his receiving it seated ; and the evident 
embarrassment of the speaker and assembly in 
dealing with the point took away much of the dig- 
nity of the punishment. 

The rapid passage of the embargo difficulties 
into open war with Great Britain brought Con- 
necticut Federalism into the broader field of New 
England Federalism. The first conflict with the 
general government came on the employment of 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 349 

the militia of the State. The Constitution gives 
congress, and an act of congress gave the Presi- 
dent, the power to call out the militia of the 
States in three distinctly defined emergencies, — 
to execute the laws of the Union, to suppress in- 
surrections, or to repel invasions. As the regular 
army was drawn off to invade Canada, the Presi- 
dent called on the States for militia to do garrison 
duty in its place. The Connecticut governor, 
Griswold, asked in reply for a specification of the 
reason for the call, for the law that was to be exe- 
cuted, the insurrection that was to be suppressed, 
or the invasion that was to be repelled ; and it 
is not easy to see how his question was to be an- 
swered or evaded. At all events, no effective an- 
swer was made. Connecticut provided a special 
force of 2,600 men for her own defense, but en- 
tered her protest, through the assembly, that " the 
war was unnecessary." The incidents of the war 
had little to do with Connecticut, with the excep- 
tion of the blockade of New London by British 
vessels, and the constant danger of attack there or 
elsewhere, against which the State was compelled 
to defend herself, as the general government 
seemed unable or unwilling to do so. In April, 
1814, a British force landed at Saybrook and de- 
stroyed some stores ; and in August the Stonington 
militia beat off a squadron which attempted to land 
there, killing and wounding seventy-five men, with 
the loss of but a few wounded of their own num- 



350 CONNECTICUT. 

ber. All the credit due to the State's persistent 
defense of her own borders was taken away, how- 
ever, by a charge which Decatur made without 
even offering evidence for it. Having been foiled 
several times in attempting to put to sea, he 
declared that warning of his attempts had been 
given from the shore by blue-lights ; and the 
name " Blue-light Federalist " was at once used 
by the administration party as a good title for the 
dominant party of Connecticut. It was shown, on 
the other hand, that blue-lights were entirely un- 
necessary, since Decatur had never taken proper 
care to keep British emissaries out of his district ; 
but he seems to have gone on the assumption that 
a failure by Decatur necessarily implied treachery 
on the part of somebody else. 

It is unnecessary to go very far into the origin 
and history of the Hartford Convention, for Con- 
necticut had no more special connection with that 
body than to furnish a meeting-place for it. The 
grievances which led to it, the neglect of the de- 
fense of the coast by the general government, and 
the preponderance of Southern interest in the gov- 
ernment, were common to Connecticut with the 
other New England States ; but there may have 
been a reason for the selection of the place. 
Nearly twenty years before, in 1796, there ap- 
peared in the " Connecticut Courant," at Hartford, 
a series of articles signed " Pelham." Written 
with consummate ability, and apparently from a 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 351 

profound prescience of the difficulties which the 
Union was to encounter, the articles attempted to 
show that the Southern slave-system made a per- 
manent Union impossible, and that the Northern 
States should prepare for separate national exist- 
ence. The tone of the Hartford Convention's rec- 
ommendations for constitutional changes have so 
much of the spirit of these articles that one is dis- 
posed to think that, if " Pelham " was not a dele- 
gate, he was at least a close adviser, and that the 
desire for his advice was one reason for the selec- 
tion of the place. 

Connecticut's delegates to the convention were 
Chauncey Goodrich, James Hillhouse, John Tread- 
well, Zephaniah Swift, Calvin Goddard, Nathaniel 
Smith, and Roger Minot Sherman, the ablest men 
of the dominant party. The convention met with 
closed doors in the building in which the council 
of the commonwealth had been accustomed to 
meet, and Democratic leaders at Hartford and 
Washington looked for the outcome with appre- 
hension. The Episcopal rector (afterward bishop), 
Chase, declined to offer prayer at its morning 
session, explaining that he knew of no form of 
prayer for rebellion. A fussy Federal officer con- 
tributed much to the excitement at first ; but the 
substitution of Colonel Jesup preserved the peace, 
except that a squad of soldiers would now and then 
march around the building during the sessions, 
their fifes playing the " Rogue's March." With 



352 CONNECTICUT. 

the exception of such little touches of nature as 
this, the proceedings of the convention are rather 
a part of national than of local history. 

The endorsement of the convention's recommen- 
dations by the general assembly apparently left 
the Federalist control of the State complete. In 
reality, it was at death's door. The Methodist 
Church had been established in the State in 1789, 
and had extended with rapidity. It shared in the 
grievances of the dissenting sects, and reinforced 
their demands for abatement. Finally, the Demo- 
cratic party of the State came to the decision to 
make common cause with the dissenters of all 
sects, and to fight the political battle on that 
ground. In January, 1816, a convention at New 
Haven nominated Oliver Wolcott for governor, and 
Jared Ingersoll for lieutenant-governor. Wolcott 
had been a Federalist, Adams's secretary of the 
treasury, and had been accused by the Democratic 
newspapers of resorting to arson to cover up frauds 
in his office. He had since been engaged in busi- 
ness in New York city. The adoption of his 
name indicates another element in the alliance. 
The manufactures of the State, particularly in 
wool, demanded protection by tariff, and had only 
a Democratic congress to look to for it. Wolcott 's 
nomination was to give them confidence. Inger- 
soll was the Episcopal end of the ticket. Thus 
prepared, the " toleration party," as it called it- 
self, went into the election. The dominant party, 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 353 

alarmed by the prospect, hurried to make conces- 
sions, but it was too late. Ingersoll was elected, 
and Wolcott barely defeated. In 1817 both were 
elected, with a two-thirds majority of the assem- 
bly. The first step was to put all sects on an 
equality as to taxation ; the next, to repeal the 
" Stand-up Law," passed by the Federalists in 
1801, by which votes were to be cast in town- 
meeting by rising, not by secret ballot ; and the 
next, in June, 1818, to call a State convention to 
frame a constitution. The convention met Au- 
gust 26, at Hartford, with a Democratic majority 
of only ten out of two hundred members, just 
enough to compel mature deliberation and wise de- 
cision. It adopted the present constitution Septem- 
ber 15, which was ratified by a slender majority 
October 5. The Democrats were rather more dis- 
satisfied with it than the Federalists, and many of 
them voted against it. 

The constitution provided for a government to 
consist of a governor, lieutenant-governor, treas- 
urer, secretary, and comptroller, as State officers, 
and a general assembly composed of a senate and 
a house of representatives. The State officers were 
to be chosen annually by ballot, the general assem- 
bly to choose when no candidate should receive a 
majority vote. The representatives were to be 
chosen by the towns, the proportion of each town 
to be " as at present practiced and allowed." The 
erection of a new town was not to reduce the rep- 



354 CONNECTICUT. 

resentation of the town or towns from which it 
was formed, without the consent of the old towns, 
and new towns were to have one representative 
only. The senate was to be chosen by districts, 
the districts at first numbering twelve, and, since 
1828, not less than eighteen or more than twenty- 
four. The meetings of the general assembly were 
to be annual, and held alternately at Hartford and 
New Haven. Since 1873, Hartford has been the 
sole capital ; and, since 1884, the State officers 
and representatives hold office for two years, and 
sessions of the general assembly are biennial. The 
courts were to be a supreme court of errors, a 
superior court, and inferior courts to be consti- 
tuted by the assembly. The supreme and superior 
court justices were to hold office during good be- 
havior ; their term of office was limited to eight 
years in 1856. Voters were to be white males of 
twenty-one years or over, and, as the conditions 
were simplified in 1845 and 1855, were to have re- 
sided in the State for one year and in the town for 
six months, were to have sustained a good moral 
character, and to be able to read. The selectmen 
of each town were to enforce the suffrage and 
election laws of the State. 

Religious profession and worship were to be free 
to all, and no sect was to be preferred by law. No 
person was to be compelled to join, associate with, 
support, or remain a member of, any religious 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 355 

body ; and all religious bodies were to be entirely- 
equal before the law. Thus ended the connection 
of church and state in Connecticut. 

One consequence of the establishment of the 
constitution was the founding of two new colleges. 
An Episcopal academy had been incorporated at 
Cheshire in 1801, but it had been impossible to 
obtain for it a college charter from the general 
assembly. In 1823 the assembly chartered it as 
Washington College, locating it at Hartford. Its 
first commencement was held in 1827, with ten 
graduates. Its connection with its church has be- 
come closer during the intervening years, and its 
work, in conjunction with the related Theological 
Seminary until 1851, has been of the greatest ser- 
vice in the training of clergymen. In 1845 its 
name was changed to Trinity College. Its prop- 
erty is now valued at over a million dollars, and 
its buildings are among the finest in Hartford. Its 
presidents have been : Bishop Brownell, 1823-31 • 
Dr. Wheaton, 1831-37 ; Dr. Silas Totten, 1837- 
48; Dr. John Williams, 1848-53; Dr. D. R. 
Goodwin, 1853-60; Dr. Samuel Eliot, 1860-64; 
Dr. J. B. Kerfoot, 1864-66; Dr. Abner Jackson, 
1867-74 ; Dr. T. R. Pynchon, 1874-83 ; and Dr. 
George W. Smith, 1883. The Methodist Episco- 
pal Church in the State also desired an institution 
for higher education, and it obtained a charter for 
Wesley an University without difficulty in 1829, 
placing it at Middletown. Its presidents have 



356 CONNECTICUT. 

been: Dr. Wilbur Fisk, 1831-39; Dr. Stephen 
Olin, 1839-41 ; Dr. Nathan Bangs, 1841-42 ; Dr. 
Stephen Olin,' 1842-51 ; Dr. A. W. Smith, 1851- 
57 ; Dr. Joseph Cummings, 1857-75 ; Dr. Cyrus 
D. Foss, 1875-80 ; and Dr. John W. Beach, 1880. 
Its work and resources have increased until its 
productive funds are now about $700,000, and the 
annual income from them about $40,000. 

The constitution has remained fairly satisfactory 
during the subsequent growth of the State, except 
that the representation of the towns has frequently 
given control of the general assembly to a minority 
of the popular vote ; and efforts have been made, 
though as yet without success, to equalize repre- 
sentation. Whatever may be the present defects 
of the constitution, it certainly was a great advance 
on the charter. It seems to have lifted from the 
shoulders of the people a load which, however 
slight, had been sufficient to hamper them in their 
course up to that time. The original organization 
of society and government had been exceedingly 
democratic in 1637 and 1662 ; and the constitu- 
tion of 1818 had only brought it into line with the 
development of democracy, which had passed be- 
yond the charter. Labor had never been disre- 
garded or degraded, but mechanical labor had 
never been considered as quite on a level with 
agricultural. The diary of John Cotton Smith, 
the last Federalist governor, is sprinkled with 
notes of his labor among his men in the harvest 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 357 

field and in the other departments of farm work ; 
and he was but a representative of his class. On 
the other hand, there are such cases as that of 
Roger Sherman, who came into New Milford a 
shoemaker, and lived to be a senator of the United 
States ; but they were as uncommon in Connecti- 
cut before 1818 as that of Smith was common. 
The mechanic was prima facie vulgar, and his 
ability was shown by getting out of his class 
into law or into agriculture, not by increasing his 
wealth in it. There were mechanics, and good 
ones, in Connecticut before 1818 ; but the State 
only began to be a distinctly mechanical common- 
wealth when the constitution of 1818 had lifted 
all men into equality, and the mechanic was for 
the first time on an equality with the Congrega- 
tional farm-owner. 

Even under colonial conditions the mechanical 
genius of Connecticut had begun to develop the 
manufacture of the easier forms of hardware ; and 
with this development came the first appearance 
of the peddler with his wagon. About 1770 the 
manufacture of tinware was begun in Berlin, 
eleven miles south of Hartford. This was the be- 
ginning of the industry with which the name of 
Connecticut was to be so closely associated, — the 
production of " Yankee notions." The peddlers 
carried the manufactures of this and neighboring 
towns over the country in wagons, exchanging 
them for local products and reaping a double profit 



358 CONNECTICUT. 

on the exchange. Transactions of a darker dye 
than any legitimate profit were also laid to the 
account of these peddlers: their malignant in- 
genuity was debited with the introduction of 
wooden nutmegs, bass-wood hams, oak-leaf cigars, 
and similar frauds. Undoubtedly there was much 
fraudulent work : the loose conditions of such a 
trade, when ignorance on one side was always 
tempting any latent dishonesty on the other, would 
make some fraud inevitable. But the essence of 
the accusation was in the rivalry of local trade, in 
the jealousy of unsuccessful competitors, provoked 
by the sudden success of Connecticut workmen in 
their new field. They had found a sphere in 
which the niggardliness of nature could not check 
them. The lack of coal as fuel might weigh 
heavily against the value of their iron-mines, but 
the ingenuity of the workmen was a possession 
which could not be taken from the commonwealth. 
From the little beginning at Berlin has grown up 
a great system of towns, in the district along the 
Naugatuck and Connecticut rivers, devoted to the 
manufacture of hardware, of brass goods, of any- 
thing and everything in which the accuracy, skill, 
and ingenuity of the workman can make up for 
the distance of the place of manufacture from the 
source of the raw material and from the places of 
sale. Here are Ansonia, Waterbury, New Britain, 
Meriden, and a bewildering maze of other towns, 
all of which have been developed by water-power 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 359 

and human ingenuity ; older places like Hartford, 
New Haven, and Norwich have felt the reflex in- 
fluence and joined in the race ; and quite new 
places, like Bridgeport, have sprung to life and 
activity under the impulse derived from the first 
tin pail made at Berlin. Before that time, every 
enterprising man kept his eyes keenly on the be- 
nevolence of Nature, and looked to the use of some- 
thing produced in the commonwealth which he 
could improve for sale ; since that time, such men, 
no longer heeding local resources, have scoured 
the world for materials, have brought them to 
Connecticut and passed them through the crucible 
of Connecticut ingenuity, and have found in the 
results a mine richer than the Spaniard's longings 
could compass. 

The clock manufacture in Connecticut, with its 
adjuncts or derivatives, is an excellent example of 
the manner in which the mechanics of the com- 
monwealth have made their ingenuity of public 
service. Wooden clocks, of the old high pattern, 
were made at Waterbury as long ago as 1790. 
About 1793 Eli Terry went thence to Plymouth 
and began a manufacture of his own by water- 
power, his first patent of improvements being taken 
out in 1797. About 1814 he introduced the new 
and far more convenient pattern of smaller mantel 
clocks. Chauncey Jerome began the manufacture 
of brass clocks about 1821, and with this the 
modern field of Connecticut ingenuity was opened. 



CONNECTICUT. 

The parts of the clocks were soon made inter- 
changeable, so that one workman could give his 
entire time to the production of each part, while 
increased production made the whole clock far 
cheaper ; and the application of machinery to the 
production of the parts soon made prices still 
cheaper. In 1840 the value of the clocks pro- 
duced in the State, almost entirely for home con- 
sumption, was over a million dollars, and the 
manufacturers were ready to reach out after foreign 
trade. So low had they driven cost and prices 
that their first exports paid more than 2000% 
profit. The story goes that the first cargo of Con- 
necticut clocks for the English market was invoiced 
so low, in spite of this abnormal profit, that the 
custom-house officers, suspecting undervaluation, 
enforced their right to take the cargo at its invoice 
value. This suited the exporters so well that they 
immediately shipped another cargo, which met the 
same fate. A third cargo staggered the custom 
house, and it went out of the clock business. 
Since that time the world has been supplied with 
machine-made Connecticut clocks and watches. 

The little streams which fall into Long Island 
Sound are easily dammed, have abundance of wa- 
ter, and have been utilized from the first as a 
source of power. When Dr. Howe, of New York, 
invented his machine for making pins at one oper- 
ation, his most urgent need was for competent 
mechanics. These could be found only among 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 361 

the Connecticut men who had been working on 
3 clocks, and the manufacture of pins was es- 
tablished at Derby and Birmingham in 1835 and 
1838. The making of pins brought with it the 
blishment of brass-mills for the production of 
necessary wire ; and the surplus of this pro- 
duction added the manufacture of about every- 
thing into which brass plate and wire could be 
stamped or twisted. Thus a constantly widening 
field has been offered for the peculiar talents of 
the Connecticut workman. " He is usually a 
Yankee of Yankees by birth, and of a tempera- 
ment thoughtful to dreaminess. His natural bent 
is strongly towards mechanical pursuits, and he 
finds his way very early in life into the work- 
shop. Impatient of the fetters which trade soci- 
eties forge for less independent minds, he delights 
to make his own bargain with his employer, and, 
whatever be the work on which he is engaged, 
bends the whole force of an acute but narrow in- 
telligence to scheming means for accomplishing it 
easily. Unlike the English mechanic, whom a 
different education and different circumstances 
have taught to believe his own interest ill served 
by facilitating the operations of the workshop, the 
Connecticut man is profoundly convinced to the 
contrary. He cherishes a fixed idea of creating a 
monopoly in some branch of manufacture by es- 
tablishing an overwhelming superiority over the 
methods of production already existing in that 



362 CONNECTICUT. 

branch. To ' get up ' a machine, or a series of 
machines, for this purpose, is his one aim and am- 
bition. If he succeeds, supported by patents and 
the ready aid which capital gives to pro in is 
novelties in the States, he may revolutionize 
industry, forcing opponents who produce in the 
old way altogether out of the market, while bene- 
fiting the consumer and making his own fortune 
at the same time. The workshops of Massachu- 
setts, Rhode Island, and especially of Connecticut, 
are full of such men. Usually tail, thin, reflec- 
tive, and taciturn, but clever, and, above all 
things, free, — the equals, although mechanics, of 
the capitalist upon whose ready alliance they can 
count, — they are an element of incalculable value 
to American industry. Their method of attack- 
ing manufacturing problems is one which, intelli- 
gently handled, must command markets by si- 
multaneously improving qualities and cheapening 
prices. We ourselves certainly aim, as they do, 
at the specialization of manufacture, but one 
scarcely treads upon the threshold of clock-land 
before feeling how much more universally the sys- 
tem is being applied in the States than here [in 
England]. Tools and processes which we are 
inclined to consider as exceptionally clever are the 
commonplaces of American shops ; and the de- 
termination to do nothing by hand which can be 
done by a machine is a marked characteristic of 
the workmen there, while it scarcely exists among 
operatives here." 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 

This description, by a competent English ob- 
server (Mr. Daniel Pigeon), has been extracted 
and inserted in spite of the unjust characteriza- 
tion of the workman's intelligence as " narrow/' 
for the sake of the clearer view which is always 
gained by an observation from the outside. The 
characteristics which he notes* are not at all con- 
fined to the clock and brass industries : wherever 
human ingenuity, in the peculiar form it has taken 
in Connecticut, can enable a manufactory to com- 
pete successfully with its more favorably situated 
rivals, the attempt has been made to localize it 
in the commonwealth. When Eli Whitney, of 
New Haven, had been robbed of the profits of his 
wonderfully simple invention of the cotton-gin, he 
turned his attention to the manufacture of arms. 
The United States government wanted a supply of 
firearms, and Whitney, without any facilities for 
making them, took the contract for the work, rely- 
ing justly on Connecticut ingenuity to find a way. 
Everything had to be created ; but the means on 
which he relied and with which he succeeded were 
the persistent substitution of machinery for hand- 
work, the encouragement of invention, and the 
use of equivalent parts, so that each part could 
be made by the thousand and yet any part would 
fit the others. The completion of the contract es- 
tablished a successful arms-factory at Whitney- 
ville, near New Haven. Here, in 1848, Samuel 
Colt began the manufacture of his revolver, which 



364 CONNECTICUT. 

he had invented while a boy of fifteen, during a 
voyage to India, and had patented in 1836. In 
1850 lie removed to Hartford, and the Sharp's 
Rifle Company followed him the next year. The 
Winchester Arms Company of New Haven has 
since taken another .variety of work. There have 
been times when contending armies have both 
been armed from the little State of Connecticut ; 
and yet the State itself has furnished hardly a 
particle of the raw material, its entire contribu- 
tion being the ingenuity of its workmen and the 
mechanical genius of its inventors. 

It would be unjust to leave it to be inferred 
that this mechanical ingenuity has been narrow 
in its scope or narrowing in its results. Putting 
aside such cases as those of Whitney and Good- 
year, in which invention has been applied to the 
broadest and most useful fields, the later records 
of the commonwealth have been crowded with the 
names of men who have owed their rise to genius 
of this type, and have done no discredit to any 
employment to which the commonwealth has seen 
fit to call them. To specify would necessarily be 
to do injustice to those whose names would have 
to be omitted. One must hold to the general 
statement that many of the best public servants 
of the commonwealth, since its great industrial 
revolution began, have owed their rise to their 
success in some branch of mechanical industry. 
Connecticut manufacturers have regularly risen 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 365 

from the ranks, and when they have been trans- 
ferred from private to public business, they have 
held their own well in the inevitable comparison 
with their professional rivals. 

The character of the Connecticut workman has 
led to a peculiar kindness of relations between 
himself and his employer. It would be impossi- 
ble to go into particulars of the thoughtfulness of 
Connecticut employers for their employees, of the 
well -understood equality of relations between 
them, and of the consideration of employees for 
the necessities of employers, without seeming to 
advertise those few establishments that must be 
selected for illustration. Any one who will take 
the trouble to examine for himself into the rela- 
tions between the real Connecticut workman and 
his employers need not go far into the State be- 
fore being satisfied. The institutions which 
Hooker founded still retain their influence over 
the descendants of the first settlers. 

And yet one cannot but feel some fear for the 
future of the Connecticut mechanic, and, with 
him, of Connecticut industries. The tendency of 
the organization of industry is so strongly toward 
forms of combination of labor which cannot but 
be a drawback upon complete individual initiative, 
that it must be reflected in Connecticut. Indeed, 
it has already begun to affect the relations between 
employer and employed. The report of the Con- 
necticut Labor Bureau for 1885 shows, in its 



366 CONNECTICUT. 

accounts of the grievances alleged by employees, 
and of the remedies which they suggest, a spirit 
which has not been common in the State hereto- 
fore. Whether it is justified or not, is not the 
question : the main fact is that it exists, and that 
there is danger that it may result in forms of labor 
which would be fatal to individualized production. 
Other commonwealths, more favored by nature, 
may continue to produce with success under sys- 
tems which substitute combined for individualized 
labor. But Connecticut has no such advantage ; 
her long lead in the industrial race has come 
purely from the high individual ability of her 
workmen, and any tendency which operates against 
this element of prosperity cannot but affect the 
welfare of the commonwealth. 

The reputation of the Connecticut workman 
has been so long established that one is apt to 
think of the commonwealth of the last century as 
only a smaller edition of the Connecticut of the 
present. It has seemed advisable, therefore, to 
lay stress upon the fact that the Connecticut of 
the present is the creation of this century ; that 
Connecticut was almost as much an agricultural 
commonwealth in 1810 as she is now a mechani- 
cal and manufacturing commonwealth. How far 
the forward step which democracy in the State 
took in 1818 was a cause or only a symptom of 
the revolution which followed so rapidly, is more 
than any one can say ; but it is difficult to resist 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 367 

the conviction that the relation between them was 
an intimate one. 

Apart from the peculiarly State features of the 
industrial development, at least one feature of it 
has had a national and international influence, as 
Mr. E. E. Hale h^is pointed out. The Connecticut 
Joint Stock Act of 1837, framed by Mr. Theodore 
Hinsdale, a manufacturer of the commonwealth, 
introduced the corporation in the form under 
which we now generally know it. Its principle 
was copied by almost every State of the Union, 
and by the English Limited Liability Act of 1855 ; 
and the effects of its simple principle upon the in- 
dustrial development of the whole modern world 
are quite beyond calculation. All that can be 
done here is to notice the wide influence of a single 
Connecticut manufacturer's idea, and to call at- 
tention to this as another instance of the close 
connection of democracy with modern industrial 
development. 

The census of 1880 showed that the population 
of Connecticut was 622,700, of which 492,708 was 
native and 129,992 foreign. From the eighth 
State in order of population in 1790, it had fallen 
to twenty-eighth in 1880. Of this population, 
112,915 were at work in the 4,488 factories of the 
State, the capital of these being 1120,480,275, 
the annual wages 843,501,518 ; value of mate- 
rials $102,183,341, and that of the finished pro- 
duct $185,697,211. The manufacture of firearms, 



CONNECTICUT. 

clocks, India-rubber goods, wagons and carriages, 
hardware, britannia and table ware, cutlery, cot- 
ton and woolen goods, machinery, and sewing- 
machines were the leading industries ; but patent 
industries, in which Connecticut leads all the 
States, are the most numerous sources of her pros- 
perity. The assessed valuation of the State was 
$228,791,267 for real estate, and 198,386,118 for 
personal property, these of course representing 
a much larger real value. With 1.24% of the 
population of the United States, its people held 
3.24% of the national registered bond-debt. There 
were in 1885 eighty-four savings-banks, with 
256,097 depositors, and deposits amounting to 
$92,481,525 ; ten stock fire-insurance companies, 
with assets of $24,040,193 ; seventeen mutual 
fire-insurance companies, with assets of $1,195,297 ; 
and nine life-insurance companies, with gross re- 
ceipts of $110,839,326 and liabilities of $99,321,- 
018. There were twenty-two railroads, with a 
length of 974 miles, and a total value of about 
$90,000,000. Their general management has been 
excellent: in 1884 they carried 16,957,574 pas- 
sengers, of whom but one was fatally injured. 

Agriculture still occupied about 45,000 persons, 
with a capital of about $125,000,000 invested in 
30,598 farms, containing 1,642,188 acres of im- 
proved and 811,353 acres of unimproved land. 
The average size of the farms had decreased from 
106 acres in 1850, 99 acres in 1860, and 93 acres 
in 1870, to 80 acres in 1880. 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 369 

The commonwealth government still remains a 
comparatively simple one. The annual revenues 
and expenditures are about a million and a half. 
About one third of this is drawn from the towns 
by taxation, another third from taxes on railroad 
companies, and the bulk of the remainder from 
taxes on mutual fire-insurance companies and sav- 
ings-banks. The total debt, December 1, 1885, 
was $4,271,000 ; and the permanent school fund, 
$2,028,124. The principal items of expenditure, 
outside of interest on the debt, were about $200,000 
each for judicial expenses, common schools, and 
humane institutions, and about $100,000 each for 
legislative expenses and the militia. 

Before closing this brief summary of the ma- 
terial progress of the commonwealth during the 
century, a still briefer space may fairly be given 
to its political history during the same period. At 
the beginning of the century, as has been said al- 
ready, Connecticut was a steadily Federalist State, 
and it continued so until the election of 1818, or 
as long as the Federal party existed. In presiden- 
tial elections it has been the steadiest in its gen- 
eral opposition to the national Democratic party. 
It has cast its electoral vote for Federal, Whig, or 
Republican candidates at every election except five : 
1820, 1836, 1852, 1876, and 1884. But the popu- 
lar majorities have always been very slight ; and 
the feeling of the minority party that it had " a 
fighting chance " in the State has been kept up by 



370 CONNECTICUT. 

its share of success in the frequently recurring 
State elections. The pluralities have usually been 
exceedingly small. In the election of 1884 the 
Democratic vote was 67,182 and the Republican 
65,898, so that the Democratic plurality, which de- 
cided the State's electoral vote, was but 1,284, and 
there was a scattering vote besides of 4,179, or 
over thrice the deciding plurality. 

The completeness of town supremacy over 
local concerns gave rise to two incidents in the 
political history of the State, which those who 
treat of it would willingly pass over in silence, if 
that were possible. At the very out3et of the anti- 
slavery struggle in 1831 the free negroes of the 
United States determined to establish a college 
for their young men, with a mechanical depart- 
ment. New Haven was fixed upon as the location, 
partly by reason of its academic atmosphere, and 
partly by reason of the State's advantages for 
mechanical education. The announcement raised 
a storm of opposition in New Haven. The city 
officers and voters, in public meeting, denounced 
the project, and directed every means to be taken 
to defeat it. Such action was at once fatal to the 
proposed college, and it came to nothing. Early 
in 1833, Prudence Crandall, a young Quaker girl 
of Windham county, wrote to Garrison that she 
proposed to turn her girls' school at Canterbury 
into a school for colored children. The change 
was carried out during the year, and raised a more 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 371 

angry local storm than that which had been met 
in New Haven. A town meeting declared the 
school a nuisance ; the pupils were insulted on the 
streets; the vagrant act was invoked against 
them without success ; and at last the leaders of 
the opposition went to the general assembly, and 
obtained the passage of an act forbidding the in- 
troduction into the State of negroes from another 
State, for purposes of instruction, without the 
written consent of the selectmen of the town. 
Under the act Miss Crandall was arrested, and by 
the advice of her friends went to jail for a night. 
Trial after trial failed to convict her ; and " boy- 
cotting," as it is now called, was brought into play 
in its most aggravated forms. Even her church 
took part, and excluded her from attendance with 
her pupils. Finally, all other means having 
failed, her house was broken open at midnight by 
a mob, the inmates were turned out of doors, and 
the house and its contents were ruined. Miss 
Crandall then gave up her enterprise. 

One would not care to be retained for the de- 
fense in the consideration of the Crandall episode ; 
he can only wonder that Connecticut men could 
have been guilty of the persecutions which were 
inflicted upon a girl whose pictured countenance 
is almost a sufficient plea for her. But there are 
some points which should be brought to the reader's 
attention as essential to a just judgment. The 
commonwealth of Connecticut was a most unfor- 



372 CONNECTICUT. 

tunate place for such an experiment, simply be- 
cause of its peculiar local constitution. On the 
one hand, it was a great responsibility upon a little 
Windham county town to assume the burden of an 
odium which far larger places would not have 
ventured to take up at the time. Towns in other 
States might shirk responsibility by pleading that 
such an establishment was the work of a superior 
power ; in a Connecticut town it must be taken 
as the act and deed of the town itself. On the 
other hand, the universal feeling in the State, that 
a town should have the amplest liberty of control 
in its local affairs, made it easy for the town's con- 
trolling influence to get from the general assembly 
the act recognizing its selectmen's right to decide 
on this question, — an act whose form was so closely 
in accord with the general tenor of the Connecti- 
cut system that legislators must have felt it dif- 
ficult to find objections to it, even if they disliked 
its new principle. Popular passion had thus a 
strong impelling force and a temptingly clear 
field before it, and the opportunity thus afforded 
may do something to explain the whole affair. At 
least, the second consideration should do something 
to exonerate the people of the commonwealth at 
large. 

With the exception of these unpleasant features, 
the political history of the commonwealth has 
been uneventful, and the only friction yet notice- 
able is in some points in which the old forms of 



INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT. 373 

local government have seemed to become too nar- 
row for the commonwealth's growth. Most of the 
dissatisfaction has come from the constitution of 
the general assembly. The representation of the 
political units of the State in it has always been 
somewhat peculiar, owing to the survival of the 
original elements. The lower house has never 
been considered a popular body : it is the histori- 
cal representative of the towns, with all their 
original feeling of town equality. A majority of 
the lower house need not represent anything ap- 
proaching a popular majority. The senate was 
intended to represent the popular majority, but 
the twenty-four districts from which its members 
are selected have offered too tempting a prize for 
gerrymandering to be resisted. In other States, it 
is the apportionment of the lower house which is 
usually subjected to this process ; in Connecticut, 
it is the senate. The party which finds itself in 
a majority on the popular vote, and yet in a mi- 
nority in the lower house, is apt to charge injustice 
there also. And yet the historical student, how- 
ever much he may regret unequal apportionment 
in the senate, cannot but regret any attempt to 
disturb the ancient apportionment in the lower 
house. It is one of the few remnants of the origi- 
nal constitution of the commonwealth, and speaks 
too plainly the history of Connecticut to be will- 
ingly abandoned. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

CONNECTICUT IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 

Now that the heat and passion of the war for 
the Union have so far died away, it must be ad- 
mitted that the hasty rush into hostilities was 
largely due to the prevalent belief in the seceding 
States that the North and West would not fight. 
The belief rested on different grounds as to the 
two sections. The West would not fight because 
it was in her interest to secure peaceable use of the 
Mississippi, and thus mutual interest was to guard 
the South from an enemy for whom it had consider- 
able respect. The manufacturing regions of the 
North would not fight because they dared not ; 
and if they should attempt to fight, the South 
would ask no better or safer amusement than a 
conflict with them. History should have taught 
all men more wisdom : the Flemish artisan had 
long ago shown the world how his craft could fight 
upon occasion, and the Northern mechanics only 
repeated and emphasized the lesson. The aversion 
to war as an abstract principle was strongest 
among such as the typical Connecticut workman. 
He could see no use in it ; it was not in the line 



IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 375 

of his training or ambitions ; it interfered seriously 
with all that he longed to do in the world. All 
this really made him a more dangerous enemy, 
for when he was forced into warlike occupation 
he went to work at it with a peculiar determina- 
tion to finish the matter and get rid of it as soon 
as possible. But the average Southerner's opinion 
was undoubtedly voiced by Governor Hammond of 
South Carolina, when he said that the " manual 
laborers and operatives of the North " were " es- 
sentially slaves," " the mudsills of society," the 
difference being that " our slaves are hired for 
life and are well compensated ; yours are hired 
by the day and not cared for." Above others, he 
would probably have been amused by the notion 
of an actual regiment of Connecticut mechanics 
and tin-peddlers as a possible element in the deci- 
sion of the great question. 

It is a fair instance of the commonwealth's in- 
difference to military glory that her militia system 
was so completely out of gear in 1861 that she 
was unable to provide even the single regiment of 
militia assigned to her in the first call of President 
Lincoln. Up to the last moment her people were 
intensely busy with the machinery and mechani- 
cal industries which had given them so large a 
place in the material development of the country. 

A remarkable feature of the war was the group 
of " war governors " who directed the energies of 
their States during the struggle, and stand out 



376 CONNECTICUT. 

above the mass of those who have occupied the 
office. To this group Connecticut made a notable 
contribution in the person of her war governor, 
William A. Buckingham, of Norwich, one of the 
class of manufacturers and business men who have 
so often served the commonwealth. January 17, 
1861, he issued his proclamation to the militia of 
the State, warning them that their services might 
be needed at any moment, and urging them to be 
"ready to render such service as any exigency 
might demand." The ranks of the militia were 
not filled as they should have been ; but the pru- 
dent governor, on his personal responsibility, or- 
dered the quartermaster to buy equipments for 
5,000 men. They did good service just when they 
were most needed. 

In the spring of 1861, Governor Buckingham 
was reelected by a vote of 43,012 to 41,003 for 
James C. Loomis. April 16, he called for a regi- 
ment of volunteers, as there was not even a regi- 
ment of organized militia to fill President Lincoln's 
call on the commonwealth. The step was un- 
authorized by law, but the governor relied on the 
general assembly to validate it at the coming ses- 
sion. In this he represented the people exactly, 
for they had caught fire at the capture of Sumter. 
More than five times the State's quota volunteered, 
- — fifty-four companies instead of ten. But the 
curious feature of the case, as illustrating the 
survival underneath of the primitive constitution 



IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 377 

of the commonwealth, is the way in which the 
work was done. The commonwealth was met by 
an emergency utterly unprovided for by law ; the 
legislature was not in session, and the governor 
was the only available representative of common- 
wealth power. All this apparent chaos did not 
disturb the people in the least. They fell back at 
once upon the resources of their town system, as 
they would have done in 1637. Town meetings 
all over the State met and exercised their re- 
served powers to tide over the crisis. Money was 
voted to support the families of volunteers, and to 
insure a prompt response to the governor's call. 
By tens and fifteens and twenty-fives, the little 
towns poured in their contributions of men ; the 
cities and large towns sent larger numbers, and 
added larger contributions of money ; and soon 
the governor was justified in going to Washing- 
ton and inducing the administration to accept 
three regiments from Connecticut instead of one. 

When the legislature met in May, it ratified the 
governor's acts, and appropriated $2 ; 000,000 for 
military expenses. Extra pay, to the amount of 
830 a year, was voted to each enlisted man during 
the war, besides support for families of volunteers, 
six dollars per month for the wife and two dollars 
per month for each child under fourteen. The 
support was to continue until the expiration of 
the term of enlistment, even though the soldier 
should die before that time. Beyond such general 



378 CONNECTICUT. 

acts as these, it may be said with considerable 
accuracy that the commonwealth organization did 
little, and had little to do, for the conduct of the 
war : the war was managed, as far as Connecticut 
was concerned, by the towns, just as in the Ameri- 
can Revolution. Many of them are still stagger- 
ing under the load of debt which bears witness to 
their unselfish devotion to the cause. 

All through the war, the votes of the two great 
parties remained about as close as in 1861. The 
minority contained a M peace party," and its pro- 
ceedings, raising of peace flags, etc., were a con- 
stant exasperation to the people. The legislature 
met it in a fashion quite characteristic of Connec- 
ticut. It voted that any such flag was a " nui- 
sance," to be abated by any constable or justice of 
the peace of a town, or by the sheriff of the 
county. Even here, however, unofficial represen- 
tatives of the towns were usually first to abate 
the nuisance, as the town committees of safety 
had done nearly a century before. 

The first Connecticut regiment did not reach 
Washington until May 13. To compensate for the 
delay, it came perfectly prepared, even to 50,000 
rounds of ammunition, and rations and forage for 
twenty days. The second and third regiments 
followed within a day or two, all in the same con- 
dition of complete preparation. The three took 
part in the battle of Bull Run. They led the ad- 
vance, opened the battle, were not demoralized, 



IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION. 379 

and covered the retreat, — a pretty fair record for 
" mudsills " in their first battle. To illustrate the 
business habits which the Connecticut men carried 
into war-making, it is worth while to note that, 
when they marched back into their quarters near 
Washington, they not only brought their own 
camp equipage in perfect condition, but the camp 
equipage of three other regiments, and two pieces 
of artillery, which they had found abandoned and 
had thoughtfully taken possession of on the way. 
The three regiments were three-months' men, but 
their members reenlisted almost to a man ; and 
the high character of these first Connecticut rep- 
resentatives in the field may be estimated from 
the fact that more than five hundred of them be- 
came commissioned officers during the war. 

Call after call was made for troops, and the old 
commonwealth kept her quota more than full. 
She had in the service at various times twenty- 
eight regiments of infantry, two regiments and 
three batteries of artillery, and one regiment and 
a squadron of cavalry, numbering 54,882 volun- 
teers of all terms of service, or, if the terms are 
all reduced to a three -years' average, 48,181 
three-years' men, 6,698 more than her quota. For 
a State with but about 80,000 voters, and about 
50,000 able-bodied men on her militia rolls in 
1861, the percentage of volunteers is very high ; 
indeed, not more than one or two States excelled 
it. There were 97 officers and 1,094 men killed 



380 CONNECTICUT. 

in action, 48 officers and 663 men who died from 
wounds, 63 officers and 3,246 men who died from 
disease, and 21 officers and 389 men who were re- 
ported missing. 

The men who filled the Connecticut rolls were 
to an unusual degree typical of the best elements 
of the commonwealth's history. Many of the 
names show that their possessors were of foreign 
blood or birth, but the mass of them are those 
which have been familiar to the State since its co- 
lonial foundation. It was peculiarly appropriate 
that almost the first victim should have been Theo- 
dore Winthrop of New Haven, for he drew his 
blood from Connecticut's first governor, John 
Winthrop. To one who has followed the history 
of the State with any close attention, the rolls of 
her regiments are productive of a curious sensa- 
tion. He finds the same names which he has seen 
again and again in the town histories ; he can al- 
most tell from the recurring names on the rolls the 
town from which each company was enlisted ; and 
it sometimes seems as if the dead soldiers of the 
Pequot or King Philip's war had sprung to life 
again to answer the cry of a new country. And 
yet the alien names, whose owners made up so 
large a part of the State's military history, are as 
fair a reason for satisfaction, for they are a stand- 
ing proof that Connecticut's catholic spirit of hos- 
pitality has been met by a loyal adoption of the 
institutions and spirit of the old commonwealth. 



IN TEE WAR FOR TEE UNION. 381 

Any attempt to enumerate the contributions 
of Connecticut to the military and naval service 
of the United States must be embarrassing. It 
would seem unfair to omit the names, like those 
of Grant and Sherman, of men who drew their 
blood from Connecticut, and their powers for good 
from the institutions of her founders ; and yet such 
a list would stretch out far beyond the space 
which could possibly be given to it. But even 
though the attention is confined to the common- 
wealth's more direct contributions, the list is long 
enough to be embarrassing. To the navy, Con- 
necticut contributed its secretary, Gideon Welles, 
rear admirals Andrew H. Foote of New Haven, 
and F. H. Gregory of Norwalk, and commodores 
John Rogers and C. R. P. Rogers of New London, 
and R. B. Hitchcock. « In the army, Winthrop has 
been mentioned already. Among the Connecti- 
cut major-general's were Alfred H. Terry of New 
Haven, Darius N. Couch of Norwalk, John Sedg- 
wick of Cornwall Hollow, J. K. F. Mansfield of 
Middletown, Jos. A. Mower of New London, J. 
R. Hawley of Hartford, H. W. Birge of Norwich, 
and R. O. Tyler of Hartford; and among the 
brigadier-generals, Nathaniel Lyon of Eastford, 
G. A. Stedman of Hartford, O. S. Ferry of Nor- 
walk, Daniel Tyler and Edward Harland of Nor- 
wich, and A. von Steinwehr of Wallingford. So 
large a contribution of distinguished officers is 
doubly remarkable as coming from so small a 



382 CONNECTICUT. 

State, and from a State which did not enter the 
conflict out of any diseased passion for military 
glory, but simply out of the national necessity of 
the case. If we should attempt to pass below the 
higher grades of officers, the list of Connecticut 
men who fought their way into command of regi- 
ments or companies, in the service of their own or 
other States, would be almost endless. Common- 
wealth and towns have marked their gratitude to 
their representatives in the war. They have 
shown that a commonwealth's aversion to war is 
entirely compatible with the most unyielding stub- 
bornness when it is forced upon her, and that the 
eminence of her sons in the arts of peace can 
never again be taken as a safe indication that they 
are easy victims for attack. It was with no small 
pride that the people of Connecticut watched the 
close of the war, as one of her children held Lee's 
army in an iron grasp on the James, while 
another was moving up irresistibly from the far 
South, sweeping up the remaining forces of the 
Confederacy into a great net, from which there 
was no escape. And the military historian of the 
commonwealth may well be permitted to close 
this chapter for her : — 

"The first great martyrs of the war — Ells- 
worth, Winthrop, Ward, and Lyon — were of Con- 
necticut stock. A Connecticut general, with Con- 
necticut regiments, opened the battle of Bull Run 
and closed it ; and a Connecticut regiment was 



IN THE WAR FOR TEE UN T ON. 383 

marshaled in front of the farm-house at Appomat- 
tox when Lee surrendered to a soldier of Connec- 
ticut blood. A Connecticut flag first displaced the 
palmetto upon the soil of South Carolina ; a Con- 
necticut flag was first planted in Mississippi ; a 
Connecticut flag was first unfurled before New 
Orleans. Upon the reclaimed walls of Pulaski, 
Donelson, Macon, Jackson, St. Philip, Morgan, 
Wagner, Sumter, Fisher, our State left its inefface- 
able mark. The sons of Connecticut followed the 
illustrious grandson of Connecticut as he swung 
his army with amazing momentum from the fast- 
nesses of Tennessee to the Confederacy's vital 
centre. At Antietam, Gettysburg, and in all the 
fierce campaigns of Virginia, our soldiers won 
crimson glories ; and at Port Hudson they were 
the very first and readiest. . . . On the banks of 
every river of the South, and in the battle-smoke 
of every contested ridge and mountain-peak, the 
sons of Connecticut have stood and patiently 
struggled. In every ransomed State we have a 
holy acre on which the storm has left its emerald 
waves, — three thousand indistinguishable hillocks 
on lonely lake and stream, in field and tangled 
thicket." 

If the writer of the foregoing paragraph had 
repeated the stately dirge of the general court of 
two hundred years ago, it would have been but a 
just connection between the spirit of the fathers 
and of their children : " The bitter cold, the tarled 



384 CONNECTICUT. 

swamp, the tedious march, the strong fort, the 
numerous and stubborn enemy they contended 
with, for their God, king, and country, be their 
trophies over death. . . . Our mourners, over all 
the colony, witness for our men that they were 
not unfaithful in that day." 






CHAPTER XX. 

EECENT DE V EL0 P MENT . 

In the twenty years that close the nineteenth, 
century the most striking features in the develop- 
ment of Connecticut have shown themselves in the 
economic rather than in the political organization. 
Earlier chapters have described the rise of town 
and commonwealth governments ; they tell the 
story of the difficulties through which the people 
struggled that they might establish a satisfactory 
system for the conduct of their public affairs. No 
better proof can be given of the success of their 
efforts than the uneventful character of the po- 
litical history of the State through most of the 
nineteenth century. Inside the framework of 
government that time had tested, citizens could 
devote themselves contentedly to their private 
affairs ; they could take advantage, with freedom 
and security, of the wonderful opportunities of 
economic progress that the century has offered ; 
and they have effected a revolution in the economic 
organization of the State. It will be the purpose 
of this chapter to describe the economic changes 
of the past twenty years, the period in which these 
changes have been most rapid, and to notice what 



386 CONNECTICUT. 

development there has been in the political organi- 
zation. 

By 1880 Connecticut had already become a dis- 
tinctly industrial State. Nearly one half of the 
workers of the commonwealth were engaged in 
manufacturing and mechanical trades, and only 
one in five was occupied with agriculture, the 
branch of production which had once been all- 
embracing. The number of farmers has not varied 
greatly in the last twenty years, and in a sense, as 
will be shown later, it is wrong to speak of the 
" decline " of agriculture in the State. Relatively, 
however, to other branches of production, agricul- 
ture has certainly lost ground. Each of the two 
census decades has seen the addition, in round 
numbers, of thirty thousand new wage-earners to 
manufactures and of twenty thousand to trade and 
transportation, so that agriculture is now entirely 
overshadowed by the modern industries and counts 
to-day scarcely more than one in ten of the workers 
of the State. 

The growth of manufacturing is to be measured 
not alone by the increase in the number of per- 
sons engaged in it. That number includes at all 
periods many petty artisans, who in a sense are 
manufacturers, as they work up raw material into 
finished forms. These artisans perform services 
highly valued in any community, but they lack 
the peculiar efficiency of modern labor, organized 
on the capitalist system, and in their social and 



RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 387 

political relations they belong rather with the farm- 
ers than in the most characteristic parts of mod- 
ern society. The growth in Connecticut manufac- 
tures has come not from the increase in this class, 
but, in the modern style, from the increase in fac- 
tory laborers, working with machines and power 
furnished by their employers. While the number 
of persons engaged in manufactures has risen 
in twenty years from 112,000 to 176,000, the 
capital invested has grown from 1120,000,000 to 
$314,000,000 ; and the disproportion between the 
ratios of growth implies that manufactures have 
changed not only quantitatively but qualitatively 
:as well, and that Connecticut has kept pace with 
'other industrial States in accepting the capitalist 
'form of organization. 

The social and political problems arising from 
(this new form of organization are sufficiently well 
iknown to all students of modern conditions, and 
(such students scarcely need to be reminded of the 
great reason for the change, its economic efficiency. 
The reason appears clearly in reviewing the in- 
jdustries of Connecticut at the present time. The 
iseventeen leading manufactures in the State, com- 
Iprising over three fifths of the total number of 
persons engaged in manufacture and nearly three 
fifths in value of the total product, are all organized 
on the factory system, and include only 993 out of 

a total of 9128 manufacturing establishments. I 

1 

]give the list, ranking the industries according to 



i 



388 CONNECTICUT. 

the number of persons employed in each, and itali 
cizing the names of those in which Connecticu 
takes first place among all the States, in respec 
to the value of the product: textiles (especial! 
cotton, silk, woolen, and worsted), brass manufat 
tures, foundry and machine shop products, hara 
ware, corsets, fur hats, plated and brittania wart 
ammunition, cutlery, clocks, rubber goods, cai 
riages, sewing machines, iron and steel, paper an* 
wood pulp, needles and pins, electrical apparatu 
and supplies. 

In the product of manufactures, measured pe 
head of population, Connecticut has now reachej 
the second place among the States, having passe 
Massachusetts and standing next to Rhode Islant 
Still more striking, in view of the relatively smajj 
size of the State, is the fact that it exceeds every onj 
of the other States in nine (or eleven if the bras 
manufacture be divided into its parts) out o 
ninety-nine industries specified in the census c 
1900. The commonwealth has shown its abilit 
not only to keep its place at home, but to exten 
its business at the expense of foreign rivals, an 
has begun to export a considerable share of it 
products abroad. In some manufactures, lik 
those of clocks and fire-arms, the foreign trade ha 
always been considerable, but the ability to expor 
has shown itself in many other industries in th 
closing years of the century, and large factorie 
have sent one half or more of their output c 
machines and tools to foreign countries. 






RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 389 



| What reasons explain this superiority of Con- 
j necticut in manufacturing enterprise ? The ques- 
tion is answered as follows in a recent volume of 
the United States Census: " The preeminence of 
the State in manufacturing is due in part to its 
excellent communication by rail and water with all 
n parts of the country ; to its geographical location, 
, by which it can handle a large export trade ; to its 
, water-power ; to its plentiful supplies of labor and 
, capital, the former gathered easily in the great 
centres of the East, and the latter coming to it 
J not alone from its profitable manufactures but also 
j from its large insurance and banking interests ; 
i and to its joint-stock laws." 

J Nothing is said of the physical resources of the 
j State. Its mines have fallen into obscurity and 
j its agriculture produces only for household con- 
J sumption. Connecticut sends to Pennsylvania for 
i its iron, to Montana for its copper, to the South 
J for its cotton, to China for its raw silk, and all 
j over the world for its wool. It imports even its 
| power from abroad, in the form of coal ; the water 
j power of the State is small when compared with 
I that of other States, and plays an inconsiderable 
j part in manufacturing. Other factors cited in the 
j quotation are of undoubted importance. Connec- 
ticut has its full share of capital, and satisfactory 
rules under which this may be invested, especially 
now that a general corporation law has been passed ; 
and the State is well situated for the marketing of 
its products. 



390 CONNECTICUT. 

There remains the factor of labor. The authoi 
has said in an earlier chapter (page 366), that tht 
leadership of Connecticut in manufactures " ha^ 
come purely from the high individual ability oi 
her workmen." The State, then, won its place by 
the quality as much as by the quantity of its in 
dustrial laborers. Are we to understand that it 
keeps its place by the same means, — has it now 
not only an adequate supply of labor but a supply 
of exceptionally good labor as well ? 

Some indication of the individual ability of a 
people in manufactures is furnished by the number 
of inventions they bring forth. The inventions of 
Connecticut have been celebrated for generations, 
and if we follow the number produced in recent 
times we find that the ingenuity of the people is 
still prolific. From 1850 to 1900 Connecticut has 
always held the first place among the States for 
the number of patents issued in comparison with 
the total population ; in recent census years when 
the statistics have been compiled, the people of the 
commonwealth have taken out ordinarily about 
one patent to every thousand inhabitants. In the 
last decade, however, there has been a perceptible 
falling off in the rate, and consideration will show 
this to be natural and probably permanent. The 
very object of many inventions is a machine that 
will accomplish automatically what before has 
been entrusted to human skill ; unceasing demand 
for such machines comes from manufacturers who 



RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 391 

want to substitute cheap and unskilled labor for 
that which is intelligent and costly. So long as 
the demand for such machines continues it is likely 
to be supplied in large part by Connecticut inge- 
nuity and enterprise; the tradition of experiment 
and invention has been established in the State, 
and will be maintained by a select body of mechan- 
ics, who are largely of native origin, descendants 
of the original whittling Yankees. 

The demand has been satisfied, however, in many 
industries, and in them a cheaper grade of laborers 
has been established, lower in intelligence than 
the workers of fifty years ago. Of these laborers 
many are foreigners. In each of the past two 
decades the foreign-born population of Connecticut 
has increased by over 50,000, and amounts now 
altogether to 238,000. Many of the foreign-born 
have entered domestic service, many have gone 
into some petty trade or become common laborers, 
but many others, just how many it is impossible 
to say, have found employment in manufactures. 
In some districts French Canadians have become 
the predominant element, and few factories of any 
size lack English, Irish, Germans, and Swedes on 
their pay-rolls. European experts are not im- 
pressed now, as once they were, with the superior 
quality of individual mill operatives in this coun- 
try ; they find much the same people whom they 
left on the other side of the water, and they have 
begun to doubt whether the efficiency of our mills 



392 CONNECTICUT. 

is due to any improvement in labor brought on by 
the conditions of life here. 

Another cause must be sought to explain the 
efficiency of American manufactures in general, of 
Connecticut manufactures in particular. It is [ 
found in the perfection of organization in this coun- 
try and in the State. No patents are granted for 
inventions in factory organization, which enable 
the duties of manufacture to be distributed so that 
every worker in every department is called upon 
for all that he is qualified to do, no less and no 
more. Inventions of this kind, however, effect as 
real an economy as those concerned with the im- 
provement of technical processes, and play a deci- 
sive part when the competition of manufacture 
lies between great social groups such as form our 
modern factories. There is significance in the fact 
that one of Connecticut's leading manufactures, 
the pin industry, is just that which Adam Smith 
selected long ago to demonstrate the advantages of 
division, or organization, of labor. Connecticut 
has kept its place in manufacturing not by its phy- 
sical resources, not even by a superior supply of 
capital and labor, so much as by the shrewdness 
and energy of its industrial leaders, who have sur- 
passed their rivals in the efficient combination of 
the forces that are employed in making and mar- 
keting goods. 

We have carried down from an earlier time the 
idea of the importance of the individual laborer in 






RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 393 

manufactures, and we are slow to recognize with 
due appreciation the services of the factory masters. 
Connecticut owes a considerable number of its 
large manufacturing establishments to the few 
men, sometimes members of a single family, who 
have practically created each, and maintained and 
strengthened it through changing times. The 
State may well be proud of its manufacturing aris- 
tocracy ; only by the rule of the best could its in- 
dustries have been brought to their present flour- 
ishing condition. 

Further proof, if one were needed, of the part 
played by leading men in developing the industries 
of the State, is furnished by the history of another 
form of business enterprise, — that concerned with 
life and fire insurance. In the insurance business 
many of the factors that complicate the question 
of success in manufacturing are eliminated , labor, 
among other factors, is a negligible quantity. The 
Connecticut insurance companies have had to meet 
the competition of companies enjoying the finan- 
cial advantages of a situation in the money-centre 
of the country, and have suffered from the hostile 
legislation of certain States, but they still carry 
on a considerable part of the insurance business 
of the country, and stand second to none in the 
esteem of the insurance world. They owe their 
success to the honesty and economy of their corpo- 
rate management. 

It will not be necessary, for the purposes of this 



394 CONNECTICUT. 

chapter, to describe at length the changes that have 
taken place in other occupations allied in some 
respects to manufactures. In trade and transpor- 
tation, in professional and in domestic and per- 
sonal services, there has been an increase not only 
in the absolute numbers but also in the proportion 
of the population engaged. The transportation 
system has been strengthened by the addition of 
the electric street railroads, and, partly as a result 
of this change, there has been a development in 
the mercantile organization similar to that which 
has taken place in manufacturing, building up 
the large stores at the expense of their competi- 
tors. 

The agriculture of the State cannot be dis- 
missed quite so summarily. Even on sentimental 
grounds interest would attach to a branch of pro- 
duction which was for centuries the mainstay of 
the commonwealth.. There are practical reasons 
as well, however, inviting attention to the sub- 
ject. Any industry acquires an importance out 
of proportion to the number of persons engaged 
in it when it shows symptoms of depression such 
as have appeared in Connecticut agriculture ; it 
is the one sheep astray from the fold, deserving 
more care than the ninety and nine who are safe. 
Even the economic results of the decline of any 
industry represent a danger to the community, 
but the danger is intensified when the results ap- 
pear in the political organization as well. So in 



RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 395 

Connecticut, whose political constitution grew up 
on the basis of agriculture and whose political wel- 
fare depends now on the wholesome condition of 
the rural towns, every fact is of importance which 
indicates the course and the probable future of the 
agricultural crisis through which the State is pass, 
ing. 

The Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics 
investigated the condition of 693 farms in the 
State in 1888, and received from the farmers who 
conducted them reports showing that more than 
half of the number, 378, were worked at a loss. 
The farmers included their family expenses, it is 
true, with the costs of operation ; setting these ex- 
penses aside, the number of farms that ran behind 
from a purely business standpoint would be re- 
duced to 42. The fact remains, however, if we 
can regard these figures as typical of conditions in 
the State at large, that more than half of the Con- 
necticut farmers at this period found it impossible 
to make both ends meet by the methods that 
they were then pursuing and on the standard 
of living to which they were accustomed. The 
United States statistics, taken two years later, 
were also discouraging ; they showed that the 
number of farms, the acreage of farm land, the 
value of farm property, and the value of farm 
products had all decreased in the State in the 
ten years following 1880. We can admire the 
spirit, but we cannot fail to see an unhappy 



396 CONNECTICUT. 

significance, in he motto displayed over Con- 
necticut's agricultural exhibit at the Columbian 
Exposition of 1893 : " Connecticut's best crop 
her sons and daughters." 

The reasons for this depression were not peculiar 
to Connecticut, and are not far to seek. The im- 
mense advance in manufactures and trade had at- 
tracted to the cities some of the best elements of the 
rural population. The improvements in transporta- 
tion freed the growing population of the cities from 
dependence on the country immediately surround- 
ing for food supplies, and exposed the Connecticut 
farmers to the competition of producers favored 
with far greater advantages of soil or climate. It 
may be doubted whether even at this time the 
farmers of the State, taken all together, were ab- 
solutely worse off than they had been in the past. 
There had been a sharp rise, it is true, in the price 
of farm labor, but most of the objects of consump- 
tion on the farm, especially manufactured articles, 
cost much less than formerly. Even those farmers, 
however, who managed to maintain their former 
money income, and who consequently were able to 
enjoy more comforts of life than before, measured 
their standard against that prevailing in the cities, 
and regarded themselves as declining in prosperity 
because they were being passed by others. 

Adjustment to these conditions has, however, 
taken place in the ten years that closed the cen- 
tury. The number of farms, the acreage of farm 



RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 397 

land, and the value of farm property all increased 
slightly in that period, while in the value of farm 
products there has been the striking growth from 
117,000,000 in 1890 to 828,000,000 in 1900. 
The Connecticut farmers, therefore, have solved 
their problem ; they have done it almost unaided, 
and in the best way, too, not by limiting their 
expenditures but by increasing their income. 
They have reached this result by devoting them- 
selves to products especially suited to their en- 
vironment, and by studying economy in raising and 
marketing the product. 

The direction of the change is indicated in a 
sentence which I quote from an address delivered 
before the State agricultural convention in 1898 : 
" Grass is the only crop outside of special lines 
which can be grown on our Eastern farms at a real 
profit." Less than one fifth of the farms of the 
State now report their main income as coming from 
miscellaneous sources, while over one quarter are 
devoted to the raising of live stock, and nearly one 
third to dairy production. There has been a de- 
crease in the cultivation of every cereal except In- 
dian corn, and a large part of the improved land 
has been turned back to pasture. Connecticut is 
now preeminently a dairy State. By the improve- 
ment in the breed of stock, by the organization 
of creameries, of which there are now over fifty 
in the State, and by the application of scientific 
principles in dairy production, the farmers are in 



398 CONNECTICUT. 

a position to take full advantage of the profitable 
market which the large city groups offer to them. 

Space forbids a consideration of the special 
branches of production which have developed from 
the miscellaneous farming of the past. The cul- 
ture of fruit for market is largely a growth of re- 
cent years. Through the influence of a few leaders, 
fruit of unsurpassed quality, and in rapidly increas- 
ing quantity, is now grown in the State ; much 
" abandoned " farm land has been planted with 
peaches, and now yields good returns. The tobacco 
culture is a characteristic Connecticut industry, 
especially in its most recent development. The 
tobacco farmers have long been accustomed practi- 
cally to manufacture their soil, by adding to it just 
the chemical constituents which they wanted in 
the crop ; now they manufacture climate too, by 
the erection of cloth shades covering sometimes 
acres ; and experiments have proved that they can 
raise in this way a leaf equal in all respects to the 
average imported Sumatra, though the profits of 
the venture as a business undertaking are still in 
doubt. 

The economic development of the past twenty 
years has tended to a constant increase of the urban 
population, which since 1880 has included more 
than half of the inhabitants of the State. All but 
12 of the 168 towns, it is true, report some manu- 
facture carried on in them, but the proportion of 
manufacturing done in cities has increased, and 



RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 399 

over nine tenths of the manufactured product come 
from the 61 principal towns. The old form of 
town government, which continues to work fairly 
well in places that have not changed greatly from 
their original size and character, has proved clumsy 
and inefficient in larger groups ; certain of its parts 
remain everywhere throughout the State, but it 
has constantly lost ground so far as regards the 
substance of power. The list of cities, given in 
a previous chapter, has doubled in the last two 
decades, and the increase in the number of boroughs 
has been almost as rapid. In the cities the labor 
element has gained a power which is still denied 
to it in State affairs, and in several cases in recent 
years a "labor mayor" has been elected. 

If we measure the importance of political or- 
ganizations by the money standard, the municipal 
groups of Connecticut are more deserving of atten- 
tion than the State government ; in a recent year 
the combined expenditures of towns, boroughs, and 
cities was over $10,000,000, more than threefold 
the expenditures of the State treasury. The study 
of municipal politics would be unprofitable, how- 
ever, without going into details, for which there is 
no space here, and the remainder of this chapter 
must be reserved for the consideration, necessarily 
very brief, of State affairs. 

The chief interest centres in the strains devel- 
oped in the State constitution by the industrial and 
urban growth of the commonwealth. The consti- 



400 CONNECTICUT. 

tution, it will be remembered, entrusted very ex- 
tensive powers to a legislature in which the towns, 
as such, enjoyed peculiar influence. The constitu- 
tion did not provide for a recognition in the field 
of politics of such extensive economic and social 
changes as have occurred, and recent years have 
been marked by attempts to secure its revision. 

In two important points, the mode of electing a 
governor and the composition of the State Senate, 
revision has been effected. The two great politi- 
cal parties of the State have shown nearly equal 
strength at the polls, and the slight diversion of 
votes effected by a third party, the Prohibitionists, 
has on four occasions since 1880 prevented any 
candidate from receiving the absolute majority re- 
quired by the constitution ; the Democratic candi- 
date might receive a popular plurality of several 
thousand, but the right of election would go to the 
General Assembly, and there his rivai would be 
chosen. In 1890 the popular vote was very close, 
but on the face of the returns the Democratic 
candidate, Luzon B. Morris, had a majority over 
all of 26. There was a question, however, about 
some ballots which local election officials had re- 
jected, but which would, if counted, increase the 
total vote so as to leave no candidate with a ma- 
jority. The lower house of the legislature, which 
was as usual Republican, asserted the right of the 
General Assembly to examine and correct the vote 
as it came to them from the canvassing board of 



RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 401 

the State ; the Senate, then Democratic, denied 
this right, and over this question there was a dead- 
lock which lasted throughout the session, and 
stopped legislative business entirely. The Demo- 
cratic candidate for comptroller was conceded a 
majority and took office, but the other candidates 
were left hanging in the air, and for lack of " duly 
qualified " successors the Republican incumbents 
continued in office from the previous administra- 
tion. The bitterness arising from this conflict did 
not blind people to the injustice, or at least the in- 
expediency, of the system which made it possible. 
To this grievance another was added. The con- 
stitutional provisions touching the State Senate 
made it impossible to pay regard to population in 
its apportionment, and had led to gross inequalities 
in the upper house, where alone representation by 
population was possible. In 1900 one district had 
tenfold the population of another. Popular sen- 
timent against these features of the constitution 
grew so strong that the dominant party was forced 
to action, and, in 1892, took the first steps neces- 
sary for their revision ; encouraged by Republican 
gains they retraced their steps in 1894, but the 
" lost amendments " were only deferred, and were 
finally passed and accepted by the people in 1901. 
The chief State officials are now elected by a plu- 
rality vote of the people, and the Senate is to be 
reapportioned in districts more nearly equal in 
population. 



402 CONNECTICUT. 

There remain to be considered questions still 
unsettled, of which the most important is the com- 
position of the House of Representatives. The 
constitution of 1818 fixed representation on the 
existing basis, with provisions entirely inadequate 
to meet the changes in the distribution of popu- 
lation which have since taken place. Towns of a 
few hundred inhabitants have as many representa- 
tives as cities approaching or exceeding a hundred 
thousand ; even among the small towns there is 
no consistency in the apportionment of representa- 
tives. New Haven, with a population of 108,027, 
has still but two representatives ; Union, with 428, 
has two; Hamden, with 4,626, has but one. It 
seems hardly worth while to quote the statistical 
comparisons further ; the most vigorous imagina- 
tion is not likely to exceed the facts in picturing 
the present condition. 

In the last General Assembly the farmers num- 
bered 89 out of a total of 255, and exceeded the 
members of any other vocation. The custom of 
reelection has grown more and more rare in the 
course of time, and rotation has taken its place ; 
scarcely one representative in twenty is elected to 
the succeeding Assembly. The great majority 
of representatives come from the country districts, 
without previous experience in legislation, and un- 
trained to the scientific treatment of the complex 
legal and fiscal questions which form a large part 
of State legislation. Ignorance rather than cor- 



RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 403 

ruption is the serious charge to be brought against 
the rural representatives. Indirect bribery, paying 
a man " for his time " when he voted, was formerly 
common in the towns ; it has been checked to some 
extent by the passage of a secret ballot law, and, 
with more efficiency probably, by the action of the 
better elements in the towns. Election expenses 
are still unduly large, it is said, and legislative 
corruption is constantly hinted at, but it would be 
hard to prove that rural voters and legislators are 
worse than their fellows in the cities. 

Critics of the existing system of representation 
hold it responsible for the lack of laws to regulate 
the lobby and to punish corrupt practices ; they 
charge against it also selfishness and extravagance 
in the conduct of the State's finances. The tax 
on towns was suspended in 1891, and has not 
since been resumed ; and the public revenues come 
now almost entirely from taxes on corporations. 
Some of the abundant revenue has been applied 
to the reduction of the debt, but other parts have 
been expended on objects of doubtful utility, espe- 
cially in the multiplication of offices, and the sum 
total of expenditures has grown rapidly. None 
will question the need of better roads in Con- 
necticut, or the propriety of the State sharing the 
burden of their construction ; it seems significant, 
however, that in 1895, when the State first con- 
tributed to this object, it paid but one third of the 
expense, in 1897 it paid half, and in 1899 it was 



404 CONNECTICUT. 

charged with two thirds or three fourths, while 
the total appropriation for the assistance of the 
towns increased at each session. 

Proposals for a change in the basis of represen- 
tation had been made before 1850, and repeated 
from time to time, but the discontent culminated 
at the end of the century. The advocates of re- 
form despaired of reaching their end by securing 
an amendment of the constitution in the regular 
form, which prescribes a majority vote in the lower 
house of one legislature, a two thirds vote of both 
houses in the next, and finally a ratification by the 
people. They demanded that the revision should 
be effected by a convention, and though to the 
lawyers this seemed " disorderly," as the organic 
law specified other means, the General Assembly 
consented at last to take the will of the people 
on the subject, and by over 20,000 majority the 
convention was voted. 

While the popular vote was so strongly in favor 
of the convention, the returns shjow that over three 
fourths of the towns voted against it, and as the body 
was composed of one delegate from each town 
it was certain to be very critical, if not actually 
hostile, toward any scheme of revision. Over sixty 
different plans to change the system of represen- 
tation were brought forward, and it is noteworthy 
that of these all but one, which never received 
serious consideration, accepted the town idea, and 
left the control of the House of Representatives 



RECENT DEVELOPMENT. 405 

with the towns of less than 5000 inhabitants. 
After discussion lasting over four months a plan 
was finally accepted which assured to each town 
one representative, gave one additional to towns 
having over 2000 inhabitants, and added one more 
for each 50,000 above 50,000. This plan would 
have taken 30 members from small towns, and 
added 29 to the larger places, diminishing the num- 
bers of the House by 1. It contemplated also an 
increase in the Senate. Beside this mild reform 
in representation the convention proposed further 
changes in the constitution, among others prohibit- 
ing the appointment of members of the legislature 
to other public office during the term for which 
they were elected, and giving the governor power 
to veto parts of appropriation bills. 

The plan of representation proposed by the con- 
vention was naturally opposed at the polls by the 
people of the smaller towns, and it failed to satisfy 
the inhabitants of the larger towns and the cities. 
Interest flagged when the outcome of the conven- 
tion was known, and the popular vote on the pro- 
posed revisions was " remarkable alike for the 
significance of its emphatic disapproval and the 
insignificance of its total volume. Practically 5 
per cent, of the registered voters favored the new 
constitution, 10 per cent, disapproved it, and 85 
per cent, did not vote either way." The student 
of Connecticut politics from whom these words 
are quoted finds, however, in the past history of 



406 CONNECTICUT. 

the State, reason to believe that the question will 
not be allowed to remain long unsettled, and looks 
to the legislature to make some reasonable change 
which will decide it. Thus much is certain, that 
in the immediate future no change will be made 
which will destroy the peculiar feature of the 
Connecticut constitution, its principle of town 
representation. 



APPENDIX. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF 1639. 

(Abbreviations only are modernized.) 

• Forasmuch as it hath pleased the Allmighty God by 
the wise disposition of his diuyne providence so to Or- 
der and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and 
Residents of Windsor, Harteford and Wethersfield are 
now cohabiting and dwelling in and vppon the River of 
Conectecotte and the Lands thereunto adioyneing ; And 
well knowing where a people are gathered togather the 
word of God requires that to mayntayne the peace and 
vnion of such a people there should be an orderly and 
decent Gouerment established according to God, to or- 
der and dispose of the affayres of the people at all sea- 
sons as occation shall require ; doe therefore assotiate 
and conioyne our selues to be as one Publike State or 
Commonwelth ; and doe, for our selues and our Suc- 
cessors and such as shall be adioyned tc vs att any tyme 
hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation 
togather, to mayntayne and presearue the liberty and 
purity of the gospell of our Lord Jesus which we now 
professe, as also the disciplyne of the Churches, which ac- 
cording to the truth of the said gospell is now practised 



408 CONNECTICUT. 

amongst vs ; As also in our Ciuell Affaires to be guided 
and gouerned according to such Lawes, Rules, Orders 
and decrees as shall be made, ordered & decreed, as fol- 
loweth : — 

1. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that there 
shall be yerely two generall Assemblies or Courts, the 
first on the second thursday in Aprill, the other the sec- 
ond thursday in September, following ; the first shall be 
called the Courte of Election, wherein shall be yerely 
Chosen from tyme to tyme soe many Magestrats and 
other publike Officers as shall be found requisitte ; 
Whereof one to be chosen Gouernour for the yeare en- 
sueing and vntill another be chosen, and noe other Mag- 
estrate to be chosen for more than one yeare ; provided 
alwayes there be sixe chosen besids the Gouernour ; 
which being chosen and sworn according to an Oath re- 
corded for that purpose shall haue power to administer 
justice according to the Lawes here established, and for 
want thereof according to the rule of the word of God ; 
which choise shall be made by all that are admitted free- 
men and haue taken the Oath of Fidellity, and doe co- 
habitte within this Jurisdiction, (hauing beene admitted 
Inhabitants by the major part of the Towne wherein 
they Hue) * or the mayor parte of such as shall be then 
present. 

2. It is Ordered, sentensed and decreed, that the 
Election of the aforesaid Magestrats shall be on this 
manner : euery person present and quallified for choyse 
shall bring in (to the persons deputed to receaue them) 
one single paper with the name of him' written in yt 
whom he desires to haue Gouernour, and he that hath 

1 Inserted at a later period. 



APPENDIX. 409 

the greatest number of papers shall be Gouernour for 
that yeare. And the rest of the Magestrats or publike 
Officers to be chosen in this manDer : The Secretary 
for the tyme being shall first read the names of all that 
are to be put to choise and then shall seuerally nominate 
them distinctly, and euery one that would haue the per* 
son nominated to be chosen shall bring in one single 
paper written vppon, and he that would not haue him 
chosen shall bring in a blanke ; and euery one that hath 
more written papers than blanks shall be a Magestrat 
for that yeare ; which papers shall be receaued and told 
by one or more that shall be then chosen by the court 
and sworn e to be faythfull therein ; but in case there 
should not be sixe chosen as aforesaid, besids the Gou- 
ernor, out of those which are nominated, then he or they 
which haue the most written papers shall be a Mage- 
strate or Magestrats for the ensueing yeare, to make vp 
she foresaid number. 

3. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that the Sec- 
retary shall not nominate any person, nor shall any per- 
son be chosen newly into the Magestracy which was not 
propownded in some Generall Courte before, to be nom- 
inated the next Election ; and to that end yt shall be 
lawfull for ech of the Townes aforesaid by their depu- 
tyes to nominate any two whom they conceaue fitte to 
be putte to Election ; and the Courte may ad so many 
more as they iudge requisitt. 

4. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed that noe 
person be chosen Gouernor aboue once in two yeares, 
and that the Gouernor be alwayes a member of some ap- 
proved congregation, and formerly of the Magestracy 
within this Jurisdiction ; and all the Magestrats Free- 



410 CONNECTICUT. 

men of this Commonwelth : and that no Magestrate or 
other publike officer shall execute any parte of his or 
their Office before they are seuerally sworne, which 
shall be done in the face of the Courte if they be pres- 
ent, and in case of absence by some deputed for that 
purpose. 

5. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that to the 
aforesaid Courte of Election the seuerall Townes shall 
send their deputyes, and when the Elections are ended 
they may proceed in any publike searuice as at other 
Courts. Also the other Generall Courte in September 
shall be for makeing of lawes, and any other publike oc- 
cation which conserus the good of the Commonwelth. 

6. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that the Gou- 
ernor shall, either by himself e or by the secretary, send 
out summons to the Constables of euery Towne for the 
cauleing of these two standing Courts, one month at lest 
before their seuerall tymes : And also if the Gouernor 
and the gretest parte of the Magestrats see cause vppon 
any spetiall occation to oall a generall Courte, they may 
giue order to the secretary soe to doe within fowerteene 
dayes warneing : and if vrgent necessity so require, vp- 
pon a shorter notice, giueing sufficient grownds for yt 
to the deputyes when they meete, or els be questioned 
for the same ; And if the Gouernor and Mayor parte of 
Magestrats shall ether neglect or refuse to call the two 
Generall standing Courts or ether of them, as also at 
other tymes when the occations of the Commonwelth re- 
quire, the Freemen thereof, or the Mayor parte of them, 
shall petition to them soe to doe : if then yt be ether 
denyed or neglected the said Freemen or the Mayor 
parte of them shall haue power to giue order to the 



APPENDIX. 411 

Constables of the seuerall Townes to doe the same, and 
so may meete togather, and chuse to themselues a Mod- 
erator, and may proceed to do any Acte of power, which 
any other Generall Courte may. 

7. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed that after 
there are warrants giuen out for any of the said Gen- 
erall Courts, the Constable or Constables of ech Towne 
shall forthwith give notice distinctly to the inhabitants 
of the same, in some Publike Assembly or by goeing or 
sending from howse to howse, that at a place and tyme 
by him or them lymited and sett, they meet and assem- 
ble themselues togather to elect and chuse certen dep- 
utyes to be att the Generall Courte then following to 
agitate the afayres of the commonwelth ; which said 
Deputyes shall be chosen by all that are admitted In- 
habitants in the seuerall Townes and haue taken the 
oath of fidellity ; prouided that non be chosen a Deputy 
for any Generall Courte which is not a Freeman of this 
Commonwelth. 

The foresaid deputyes shall be chosen in manner 
following: euery person that is present and quallified as 
before expressed, shall bring the names of such, written 
in seuerall papers, as they desire to haue chosen for 
that Imployment, and these 3 or 4, more or lesse, being 
the number agreed on to be chosen for that tyme, that 
haue greatest number of papers written for them shall 
be deputyes for that Courte ; whose names shall be en- 
dorsed on the backe side of the warrant and returned 
into the Courte, with the Constable or Constables hand 
vnto the same. 

8. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that Wynd- 
Bor, Hartford and Wethersfield shall haue power, ech 



412 CONNECTICUT. 

Towne, to send fower of their freemen as their deputyes 
to euery Generall Courte ; and whatsoeuer other Townes 
shall be hereafter added to this Jurisdiction, they shall 
send so many deputyes as the Courte shall judge meete, 
a resonable proportion to the number of freemen that 
are in the said Townes being to be attended therein ; 
which deputyes shall haue the power of the whole 
Towne to giue their voats and alowance to all such 
lawes and orders as may be for the publike good, and 
unto which the said Townes are to be bownd. 

9. It is Ordered and decreed, that the deputyes thus 
chosen shall haue power and liberty to appoynt a tyme 
and a place of meeting togather before any Generall 
Courte to aduise and consult of all such things as may 
concerne the good of the publike, as also to examine 
their owne Elections, whether according to the order, 
and if they or the gretest parte of them find any such 
election to be illegall they may seclud such for present 
from their meeting, and returne the same and their re- 
sons to the Courte ; and if yt proue true, the Courte 
may fyne the party or partyes so intruding and the 
Towne, if they see cause, and giue out a warrant to 
goe to a newe election in a legall way, ether in parte or 
in whole. Also the said deputyes shall haue power to 
fyne any that shall be disorderly at their meetings, or 
for not comming in due tyme or place according to ap- 
poyntmeut ; and they may returne the said fynes into 
the Courte if yt be refused to be paid, and the Tres- 
urer to take notice of yt, and to estreete or levy the 
same as he does other fynes. 

10. It is Ordered, sentenced and decreed, that euery 
Generall Courte, except such as through neglect of the 



APPENDIX. 413 

Gouernor and the greatest parte of Magestrats the Free- 
men themselves doe call, shall consist of the Gouernor, 
or some one chosen to moderate the Court, and 4 other 
Magestrats at lest, with the mayor parte of the deputyes 
of the seuerall Townes legally chosen; and in case the 
Freemen or mayor parte of them, through neglect or re- 
fusall of the Gouernor and mayor parte of the mage- 
strats, shall call a Courte, yt shall consist of the mayor 
parte of Freemen that are present or their deputyes, 
with a Moderator chosen by them : In which said Gen- 
erall Courts shall consist the supreme power of the 
Common welth, and they only shall haue power to make 
lawes or repeale them, to graunt leuyes, to admitt of 
Freemen, dispose of lands vndisposed of, to seuerall 
Townes or persons, and also shall haue power to call 
ether Courte or Magestrate or any other person what- 
soeuer into question for any misdemeanour, and may for 
just causes displace or deale otherwise according to the 
nature of the offence ; and also may deale in any other 
matter that concerns the good of this commonwelth, ex- 
cepte election of Magestrats, which shall be done by the 
whole boddy of Freemen. 

In which Courte the Gouernour or Moderator shall 
haue power to order the Courte to giue liberty of spech, 
and silence vnceasonable and disorderly speakeings, to 
put all things to voate, and in case the voate be equall 
to haue the casting voice. But non of these Courts 
shall be adiorned or dissolued without the consent of 
the maior parte of the Court. 

11. It is ordered, sentenced and decreed, that when 
any Generall Courte vppon the occations of the Com- 
monwelth haue agreed vppon any summe or summes of 



414 CONNECTICUT. 

mony to be leuyed vppon the seuerall Townes within 
this Jurisdiction, that a Committee be chosen to sett out 
and appoynt what shall be the proportion of euery 
Towne to pay of the said leuy, provided the Committees 
be made vp of an equall number out of each Towne. 

14th January, 1638, the 11 Orders abouesaid are 
voted. 

[Until 1752, the legal year in England began March 
25 (Lady Day), not January 1. All the days between 
January 1 and March 25 of the year which we now call 
1639 were therefore then a part of the year 1638; so 
that the date of the Constitution is given by its own 
terms as 1638, instead of 1639. The whole document 
may be found in Connecticut Public Records, I. 20-25.] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



1. The general histories of the United States : Bancroft, Hii> 
dreth, Bryant and Gay, Schouler, McMaster, Pitkin, 
Holmes, et als. 

2. Palfrey's History of New England ; Savage's Winthrop's 
History of New England ; Bradford's New England Chronol- 
ogy ; Hubbard's General History of New England ; Oliver's 
Puritan Commonwealth, chapter ii. (Episcopalian view) ; Back- 
us's History of New England (Baptist view) ; Church's History 
of King Philip's War ; Drake's French and Indian War in New 
England; Mass. Hist. Soc. Publications, particularly Garden- 
er's Relation of the Pequot Wars, and Vincent's True Rela- 
tion ; Mather's Magnalia Christi ; Bacon's Genesis of the New 
England Churches ; Felt's Ecclesiastical History of New Eng- 
land. 

3. Doyle's American Colonies ; Lodge's English Colonies in 
America ; Force's Colonial Tracts. 

4. Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts ; Arnold's His- 
tory of Rhode Island ; Bartlett's Records of Rhode Island ; 
Hall's History of Vermont; Brodhead's History of New 
York ; O'Callaghan's History of New Netherlands ; 2 O'Cal- 
laghan's Documentary History of New York (Leisler Adminis- 
tration) ; Hazard's Pennsylvania Archives ; Sheafer's Histori- 
cal Map of Pennsylvania ; Regents' Report on the Boundaries 
of the State of New York ; Bowen's Boundary Disputes of Con- 
necticut ; Prime's History of Long Island ; Thompson's His- 
tory of Long Island ; Wood's First Settlement of Long Island 
Towns. 

5. The general histories of Connecticut : Trumbull, Dwight, 
Hollister, and Carpenter and Arthur ; Atwater's History 



416 CONNECTICUT. 

of New Haven ; Levermore's Republic of New Haven ; Lam- 
bert's History of New Haven Colony ; Colonial Records of Con- 
necticut, edited by J. H. Trumbull and C. J. Hoadly ; Colo- 
nial Records of New Haven, edited by Hoadly ; Barber's 
Connecticut Historical Collections. 

6. Connecticut Historical Society Proceedings, particularly 
Hooker's Letter to Winthrop, Bulkeley's People's Right to 
Election, Hoadly's Public Seal of Connecticut, The Hartford 
Church Controversy, and Correspondence of Silas Deane ; New 
Haven Historical Society Papers, particularly Bacon's Civil 
Government in New Haven, Trowbridge's History of the Long 
Wharf, Bronson's Connecticut Currency, Whitaker's Early 
History of Southold, Goodrich's Invasion of New Haven, Dex- 
ter's Memoranda on the Regicides, Trowbridge's Ancient 
Houses in New Haven, Beardsley's Mohegan Land Contro- 
versy, E. C. Baldwin's 'Branford Annals, S. E.Baldwin's 
New York Boundary Line, Bronson's Early Government of 
Connecticut, and Dexter's Early Relations between New Neth- 
erland and New England; Connecticut Valley Historical Society 
Papers, particularly the Review of Peters's History ; Percival's 
Geology of Connecticut. See also the Introduction to Palfrey ; 
De Eorest's Indians of Connecticut; 2 Hazard's State Papers 
(New England Commissioners) ; Brodhead's Government of 
Sir Edmund Andros. 

7. J. H. Trumbull's Notes on the Constitutions of Connecti- 
cut, and True Blue Laws ; Peters's General History of Connec- 
ticut ; Hinman's Code of 1650, and Antiquities of Connecticut; 
Fowler's Local Law in Connecticut ; Bacon's Contributions to 
the Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut ; Beardsley's History 
of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut ; Johnston's Genesis of 
a New England State (Connecticut). 

8. Miner's History of Wyoming ; H. M. Hoyt's Brief of the 
Wyoming Title, with the very complete bibliography at page 101, 
the volume being the fairest and best account of the contro- 
versy that I have found. 

9. Phelps's History of the Newgate of Connecticut; Elliot's 
Debates ; President Dwight's Travels in New England and 
New York ; Wood's Administration of John Adams ; Good- 
rich's Recollections of a Life-Time ; Dwight's History of the 



APPENDIX. 417 

Hartford Convention ; Adams's New England Federalism 
(Gould's letter) ; J. H. Trumbull's Defence of Stonington; 
Bushnell's Historical Estimate of Connecticut (in his Work 
and Play) ; Bishop's History of American Manufactures ; An 
Historical and Industrial Review of Connecticut (1884); E. E. 
Hale's Brown Univ. Address : Everest's Poets of Connecticut ; 
French's Art and Artists in Connecticut ; Croffut and Mor- 
ris's History of Connecticut during the Recent War. 

10. Stuart's Hartford in the Olden Time ; Trumbull's His- 
tory of Hartford County (the first volume has been used most 
largely) ; Walker's 250th Anniversary of the First Church of 
Hartford ; Stiles's History of Ancient Windsor, and Supple- 
ment ; Hall's History of Norwalk ; Caulkins's History of New 
London, and History of Norwich ; Huntington's History of 
Stamford ; Mead's History of Greenwich ; Gardiner's Notes on 
East Hampton (N. Y. Hist. Soc. Pub., 1869) ; Holland's His- 
tory of Western Massachusetts; Morris's Early History of 
Springfield, Mass. ; Cothren's History of Ancient Woodbury ; 
Chapin's History of Glastenbury ; Larned's History of Wind- 
ham County ; Kilbourne's Biographical History of Litchfield 
County ; Woodruff's History of Litchfield ; Bronson's His- 
tory of Waterbury ; Rot's History of Norfolk ; Davis's History 
of Wallingford and Meriden ; Taintor's Records of Colchester ; 
Phelps's History of Simsbury, Granby, and Canton ; Boyd's 
Annals of Winchester; Andrews's History of New Britain; 
Fowler's History of Durham ; Todd's . History of Redding ; 
Sharpe's History of Seymour; Orcctt's History of Wolcott, 
and History of Torrington; Dexter's New Haven in 1784, and 
Town Names in Connecticut. 

11. Kingsley's Historical Discourse, New Haven, 1838; 
Bacon's Historical Discourses, New Haven, 1838; Woolsey's 
Historical Discourse, Yale College, 1850; Litchfield County 
Centennial Addresses, 1851 ; Field's Centennial Address, Mid- 
dletown, 1853; Gilman's Historical Address, Norwich, 1859; 
W. L. Kingsley's Yale College : A Sketch of its History. 

12. Allen's Biographical Dictionary ; Sparks's Library of 
American Biography ; Winthrop's Life and Letters of Win- 
throp (senior) ; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., ser. 5, vol. 8 (Winthrop 
Papers) ; New York Hist. Soc. Coll., ser. 2, vol. ii. ;" Moore's 



418 CONNECTICUT. 

Memoir of Eaton ; Stiles's History of the Regicides ; Warren's 
Three Judges ; Stuart's Life of Jonathan Trumbull ; Beards- 
ley's Life of William Samuel Johnson ; Humphreys's Life of 
Putnam ; Cutler's Life of Putnam ; Wolcott Memorial ; 
Holmes's Life of President Stiles ; Sprague's Life of President 
Dwight ; Westcott's Life of John Fitch ; Goodwin's Genea- 
logical Notes ; Flanders' or Van Santvoord's Lives of the 
Chief Justices (for Ellsworth) ; Lossing's or Sanderson's Lives 
of the Signers (for Sherman, Huntington, Williams, and Wol- 
cott) ; Ward's Life of Percival; Pierce's Life of Goodyear; 
Howe's Eminent Mechanics; Hoppin's Life of A. H. Foote; 
Stowe's Men of Our Time (for W. A. Buckingham). 

Note. As the foregoing list was prepared by Prof. Johnston 
to indicate the authorities on which he based his text, there is, 
clearly, no warrant for its revision. Attention may, however, 
be drawn to the following articles which have appeared since the 
first edition of this volume, and which present views differing 
from those of Prof. Johnston in important points : C. M. An- 
drews's River Towns of Connecticut, Baltimore, 1889, and Ori- 
gin of Connecticut Towns in Annals of Amer. Acad. Pol. Sci., Oct., 
1890 ; H. L. Osgood's Connecticut as a Corporate Colony, in Pol. 
Sci. Quarterly, June, 1899 ; Roger Welles's Constitutional His- 
tory of Connecticut, in Conn. Magazine, Feb. -March, 1899. The 
most important additions to the material for the history of Con- 
necticut are to be found in the publications of the State and of 
State, county, and local societies, and in local histories, of which 
a number have been published in recent years. 

The principal authorities for the supplementary chapter are : 
XJ. S. Census; Public Documents of Connecticut, especially Re- 
ports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and of the Board of 
Agriculture; Gold's Handbook of Connecticut Agriculture; arti- 
cles on the gubernatorial controversy by Harrison, Baldwin, 
and Blake, in New Englander, April, 1891; Deming's Town 
Rule in Connecticut, in Pol. Sci. Quarterly, Sept., 1889; M. B. 
Cary's Connecticut Constitution, 1900, and Struggle for Con- 
stitutional Reform, in Yale Law Journal, Jan., 1901 ; C. H. 
Clark's Connecticut Convention, in Yale Review, Aug., 1902, 

Statistics in this chapter are cited generally in round numbers. 



THE GOVERNORS OF CONNECTICUT. 



These were chosen annually until 1876, and thereafter for two 
years. Until John Winthrop's second election, immediate reelec- 
tion was forbidden. 



1639-40, 
1640-41, 
1641-42, 
1642-43, 
1643-44, 
1644-45, 
1645-46, 
1646-47, 
1647-48, 
1648-49, 
1649-50, 
1650-51, 
1651-52, 
1652-53, 
1653-54, 
1654-55, 
1655-56, 
1656-57, 
1657-58, 
1658-59, 
1659-76, 
1676-83, 



John Haynes. 
Edward Hopkins. 
John Haynes. 
George Wyllys. 
John Haynes. 
Edward Hopkins. 
John Haynes. 
Edward Hopkins. 
John Haynes. 
Edward Hopkins. 
John Haynes. 
Edward Hopkins. 
John Haynes. 
Edward Hopkins. 
John Haynes. 
Edward Hopkins. 
Thomas Welles. 
John Webster. / 
John Winthrop. 
Thomas Welles. 
John Winthrop. 
William Leete. 



1683-87, Robert Treat. r 
1687-89, (Andros.) 
1689-98, Robert Treat. 
1698-1707, Fitz John Winthrop. 
1707-24, Gurdon Saltonstall. 
1724-41, Joseph Talcott. * 
1741-50, Jonathan Law. 
1750-54, Roger Wolcott. 
1754-66, Thomas Fitch. 
1766-69, William Pitkin. 
1769-84, Jonathan Trumbull. 
1784-86, Matthew Griswold. 
1786-96, Samuel Huntington. 
1796-98, Oliver Wolcott. 
1798-1809, Jonathan Trumbull. 
1809-11, John Tread well. 
1811-13, Roger Griswold. 
1813-17, John Cotton Smith. 
1817-27, Oliver Wolcott. 
1827-31, Gideon Tomlinson. 
1831-33, John S. Peters. 
1833-34, H. W.Edwards. 



420 



CONNECTICUT. 



1834-35, Samuel A. Foote. 
1835-38, H. W. Edwards. 
1838-42, W. W. Ellsworth. 
1842-44, C. P. Cleveland. 
1844-46, Roger S. Baldwin. 
1846-49, Clark Bissell. 
1849-50, Joseph Trumbull. 
1850-54, Thomas H. Seymour. 
1854-55, Henry Dutton. 
1855-57, W. T. Minor. 
1857-58, A. H. Holley. 
1858-66, W. A. Buckingham. 
1866-67, Joseph R. Hawley. 
1867-69, James E. English. 
1869-70, Marshall Jewell. 
1870-71, James E. English. 



1871-73, Marshall Jewell. 
1873-76, Charles R. Ingersoll. 
1876-79, R. D. Hubbard. 
1879-81, Charles B. Andrews. 
1881-83, H. B. Bigelow. 
1883-85, Thomas M. Waller. 
1885-87, Henry B. Harrison. 
1887-89, Phineas T. Lounsbury. 
1889-93, Morgan G. Bulkeley. 
1893-95, Luzon B. Morris. 
1895-97. O. Vincent Coffin. 
1897-99, Lorrin A. Cooke. 
1899-1901, George E. Louns- 
bury. 
1901-03, George P. McLean. 
1903-05, Abiram Chamberlain. 



INDEX. 



Abercromeie, Gen. James, 261. 

Adams, Prof. H. B.,135. 

Agawam, 56. 

Agriculture, 3, 330, 338, 342, 357, 368, 
386, 394-398. 

Albany, N. Y., 251, 259, 276. 

Allen, Ethan, 272, 283. 

Allyn, John, 81, 160, 202, 266. 

Alsop, Richard, 340. 

Andrew, Samuel, 340. 

Andrews, William, 92. 

Andros, Sir Edmund, 125 ; at Say- 
brook, 194, 195 ; in New York, 197 ; 
in Connecticut, 199 ; at Hartford, 
200; supports Rhode Island, 213; 
downfall, 203. 

Annapolis Convention, 318. 

Ansonia, 358. 

Argal, Captain, 146. 

Arnold, Benedict, 40, 292, 303; at 
New London, 312, 314. 

Aspinwall, Dr. William, 342. 

Assistants, in Massachusetts, 65 foil., 
386 ; in Connecticut, 172, 190, 269. 

Atherton Company, 211, 214. 

Bacon, Dr. Leonard, 98. 
Ballot, the, 77. 
Bangs, Dr. Nathan, 356. 
Banks, 338, 368. 
Baptism, 225. 
Baptists, the, 236. 
Barbadoes, 267. 
"Battle of the Kegs," 297. 
Beach, Rev. John, 302. 
Beach, Dr. John W., 356. 
Belcher, Gov. Jonathan, 300. 
Bellows' Falls, 299. 
Berkeley, Bishop, 242. 
| Berlin, 357, 358. 

Birge, Gen. H. W., 381. 
Birmingham, 361. 
Blake, Admiral, 155. 
Block Island, 31. 
Blok, Adrian, 7. 
" Blue Laws," 105. 



Blue-lights, 350. 

Boundaries : disputes, 114 ; with the 
Dutch, 148 ; under the charter, 168, 
173, 273 ; with New York, 193, 205, 
207 ; with Massachusetts, 207, 209, 
271 ; with Rhode Island, 209 foil. 

Boroughs, 337. 

Boston, 84, 116, 203, 266, 288, 292. 

Boteler, Lady Alice, 112, 117. 

Brainard, J. G. C, 340. 

Brandt, 278. 

Branford, admission to New Haven, 
106; settlement, 138; meeting at, 
239. 

Brass, 361 foil. 

Bridgeport, 337, 359. 

Bromfield, Major, 313. 

Brooke, Lord, 8, 110, 168. 

Brotherton tribe, the, 54, 55. 

Brownell, Bishop, 355. 

Buckingham, Gov. Wm. A., 376. 

Buildings, 124. 

Bull, Captain Thomas, 194, 195, 251. 

Bull Run, 378-9, 382. 

Bunker Hill, 292. 

Bushnell, David, 296. 

Butler, John, 278. 

Cabots, the, 7, 11, 145. 

Capital city, 174, 270, 354. 

Cambridge, Mass. , 60. 

Cambridge platform, the, 226. 

Canonchet, 28, 53. 

Canterbury, 370. 

Carlisle Grant, the, 8. 

Carthagena expedition, the, 256. 

Cassasinamon, 51. 

Cemeteries, 340. 

Charter, the, 170 foil., 199, 201, 202, 

204, 347, 356. 
Charter Oak, the, 25, 123, 200, 204. 
Chase, Bishop, 351. 
Chauncey, Nathanael, 240. 
Cheevers, Ezekiel, 92. 
Cheneys, the, 342. 
Cheshire, 355. 



422 



INDEX. 



Chipmans, the, 272. 

Chittenden, Gov. Thomas, 272. 

Choate, Rufus, 209. 

Church and commonwealth, 77, 221, 
224, 228, 232, 233, 347, 354-355. 

Church and town, 6, 59, 220, 224, 229, 
236, 208. 

Church of England, the, 235, 236, 242 ; 
in the Revolution, 302; after the 
Revolution, 346 ; in 1818, 352. 

Cincinnati, the Society of the, 317. 

Cities, 337, 338. 

Clap, Pres. Thomas, 243. 

Clocks, 359 foil. 

Coal, 345, 358. 

Colt, Samuel, 363. 

Commerce, 339. 

Common lands, 95, 97. 

Confederation, articles of, 315. 

Congregational Church, the, 60, 222, 
230, 345 ; see Establishment, the. 

Congress, 320 foil. 

Congressmen, election of, 333. 

Connecticut River, the, 2, 7, 8, 17, 23, 
272, 358 ; imposts, 1 15, 143, 153. 

Connecticut, position and boundaries, 
1 ; area, 2; products, 3 ; harbors, 4; 
granted to Plymouth Company, 7; 
title, 8, 11 ; commonwealth of, 12 ; 
settlement, 20 ; constitution, 63 ; 
seal, 73 ; motto, 74 ; territorial 
claims, 102 ; social conditions, 128 ; 
colonial policy, 129, 289; regicides 
in, 165 ; charter, 166 foil., 285; the 
Andros episode, 199 ; in 1680, 265; 
population, 270 ; final territory, 281 ; 
in the Revolution, 294, 310 ; becomes 
a State, 304 ; influence in forming 
the constitution, 320 foil., 386; in- 
dustrial development, 328 foil.; 
politics, 345, 369 foil. ; in the war 
of 1812, 349 foil. ; in the war for the 
Union, 374 foil.; recent economic 
development, 385-398 ; preemi- 
nence in manufacturing, 386-393 ; 
physical resources, 389 ; labor con- 
ditions, 390; inventions, 390, 391 ; 
foreign-born population, 391 ; fac- 
tory organization, 392 ; insurance 
companies, 393 ; agricultural de- 
pression, 394-396 ; change in agri- 
cultural conditions, 396-398; in- 
crease in urban population, 398 : 
town government, 399; municipal 
expenditure, 399 ; deadlock in the 
legislature, 400, 401 ; inequalities 
in representation, 401-406 ; evils 
in present system of representa- 
tion, 403 ; Constitutional Conven- 
tionj 404 ; new system of apportion- 



ment, 404, 405; plan disapproved, 
405. 

Constables, 78, 79, 135, 174, 180, 181, 
210, 268, 335. 

Constitution of the United States, the, 
319 foil. 

Constitution of 1639, adopted, 63; 
origin, 73; provisions, 74 and Ap- 
pendix ; democratic nature, 79. 

Constitution of 1818, 337, 353, 357. 

Convention of 1787, the, 319 foil. 

Copper, 3, 300. 

Cornbury, Edward Hyde, Lord, 253. 

Corporation Act, the, 367. 

Cotton, John, 17, 65, 69. 

Cotton-gin, the, 363. 

Couch, Gen. D. N., 381. 

Council, the, 269, 332. 

Counties, 189, 190. 

Country pay, 249. 

Courts, 57, 190, 354 ; in New Haven, 
93, 104. 

Covenant, owning the, 227. 

Crandall, Prudence, 370. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 154, 155, 164. 

" Cuba," the, 299. 

Cummings, Dr. Joseph, 356. 

Cutler, Rev. Timothy, 242. 

Daggett, Rev. Xaphtali, 244. 

Danbury, 303. 

Darley, Henry, 110. 

Dartmouth College, 55. 

Davenport, Rev. John, 82, 92, 221 ; 
his " fundamental orders," 90 ; re- 
moval to Boston, 160 ; dealings with 
the regicides, 164 ; on the union 
with Connecticut, 175 foil. ; pro- 
posal of a college, 239. 

Day, Pres. Jeremiah, 245. 

Deane, Silas, 291. 

Debt, 369. 

Decatur, Commodore Stephen, 350. 

Delaware Company, formed, 146 ; fail- 
ure, 147. 

Democracy in Massachusetts, 64, 132 ; 
in Connecticut, 63, 70, 77, 79, 141, 
205, 220, 226, 261, 318, 356, 366. 

Democratic party, 345-348, 352, 353, 
369. 

Deputies, 76, 80, 172, 268. 

Derby, 267, 343, 361. 

Dissenters, 231, 234, 238, 346, 347,352. 

Dixon, Jeremiah, 92. 

Dongan, Gov. Thomas, 199, 205. 

Dorchester, 17, 24. 

Dudley, Joseph, 199, 218, 253. 

Dummer, Fort, 271.; 

Dutch, the, in Connecticut, 7, 14, 16, 
21, 23, 30, 51 ; fort at Hartford, 122, 



INDEX. 



423 



148, 154 ; intercourse with New Eng- 
land, 144 ; treaty of Hartford, 148 ; 
conquered, 188, 193, 260, 

Dutch West India Company, the, 145, 
147. 

Dwight, Pres. Timothy, 232. 

Dwight, Pres. Timothy, 245. 

Dwight, Theodore, 340. 

East Hampton, L. I., 135, 138. 

Eaton, Rev. Samuel, 88. 

Eaton, Theophilus, 84, 92, 138 ; house, 
89; "magistrate," 93; governor, 
103 ; death, 158 ; family, 159. 

Ecclesiastical affairs, 220 foil. 

Edwards, Pierpont, 338. 

Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, 232. 

Election laws, 77, 332, 354. 

Election sermon, 334. 

Eliot, John, 19, 54. 

Eliot, Dr. Samuel, 355. 

Ellsworth, Col. E. E., 381. 

Ellsworth, Oliver, 319, 325, 327. 

Endicott, John, 32. 

Episcopal Church (see Church of Eng- 
land). 

Establishment, the, 231, 234, 237, 345, 
347. 

Fairfield, 20, 44, 135, 308. 

Farmington, 135. 

Feake, Robert, 150. 

Federal party, 345-346, 350, 352. 

Feldspar, 4. 

Fenwick, George, 8, 110 ; comes to 
Saybrook, 112 ; commissioner, 113 ; 
sells Saybrook, 115 ; death, 117. 

Ferry, Gen. O. S., 381. 

Financial affairs, 248 foil. 

Fire-arms, 363-364. 

" Fire Lands," 282, 309. 

Fish, 5. 

Fisher's Island, 140, 207. 

Fitch, Gov. Thomas, 287. 

Fitch, John, 126. 

Fitch, Rev. James, 54, 113, 218. 

Five Nations, the, 27. 

Fletcher, Gov. Benjamin, 195, 204. 

Foote, Admiral A. H., 381. 
I " Forty Fort," 277. 

Foss, Dr. Cyrus, 356. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 259, 286, 325. 
I Free burgesses, 91, 103. 

I Free planters, 86, 91, 92, 103, 177. 

French in Connecticut, the, 312. 
I French wars, 250 foil. 

Fugill, Thomas, 92. 

i Gallop, John, 31. 

Gardiner, Lyon, 33, 112. 



Garret, Hermon, 51. 

Garrison, W. L., 370. 

General Assembly, 269, 290, 354, 373, 
401-402, 404. 

General Court, 34, 57, 58, 75, 78 ; (see 
General Assembly). 

General election, 333. 

George, battle of Lake, 259. 

Gilbert, Matthew, 92. 

Goddard, Calvin, 351. 

Goffe, William, 163 foil. 

Gold, 4. 

Gold, Nathan, 80. 

Goodrich, Chauncey, 351. 

Goodrich, Elizur, 346. 

Goodwin, Dr. D. R., 355. 

Goodwin, William, 123, 228. 

Goodyear, Charles, 364. 

Goodyear, Stephen, 102, 103. 

Gookin, Daniel, 54. 

Gorges grant, 8. 

Governor, election of, 76, 77 ; reelec- 
tion, 77; in New Haven, 93, 104. 

Granby coppers, 3, 300. 

Grant, Gen. U. S., 381. 

Greenfield Hill, 44. 

Green's Farms, 308. 

Greenwich, 150. 

Gregory, Commodore F. H., 381. 

Griswold, Fort, 312, 313. 

Griswold, Gov. Roger, 349. 

Groton, 37, 52. 

Guilford, 43 ; origin, 83; people, 84; 
purchase, 87 ; settlement, 88; or- 
ganization, 93. 

Haddam, 267. 

Hadley, Mass., 164, 228. 

Hale, Captain Nathan, 295. 

Hale, Rev. E. E., 367. 

Halfway Covenant, the, 227. 

Hamilton grant, the, 8, 9, 215, 216. 

Hammond, Gov. James H., 375. 

Hampshire grants, the, 272. 

Hardware, 357. 

Harland, Gen. Edward, 381. 

Hartford, 6, 7, 11, 15, 22, 34, 65 ; de- 
mocracy in, 73; town clerks, 81; 
early topography, 120; treaty of, 
148 ; made the capital, 174 ; church, 
223, 224 ; city, 337, 338, 340, 341 ; 
manufactures, 358 foil. 

Hartford wits, the, 340, 341. 

Hartford Convention, the, 350-352. 

Harvard CoUege, 239. 

Hasselring, Sir Arthur, 110. 

Havana, 263. 

Hawley, Gen. J. R., 381. 

Haynes, John, 18, 21, 80, 123 ; death, 
158. 



424 



INDEX. 



Haynes, Rev. Joseph, 228. 

Hazard, Samuel, 276. 

Hempstead, L. I., 139. 

Hillhouse, James, 282, 351. 

Hillhouse, William, 82. 

Hinsdale, Theodore, 367. 

Hitchcock, Commodore R. B., 381. 

Holland, 145, 154, 193. 

Holmes, William, 15. 

Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 18, 299; letter 

to Winthrop, 58, 70; democracy, 69, 

73 ; sermon of 1638, 72; house, 123 ; 

death, 158; influence, 221, 321, 322, 

365. 
Hopkins, Edward, 80, 114, 123; death, 

158. 
Hopkins grammar schools, 158. 
Hopkins, Lemuel, 340. 
Hopkinson, Francis, 297. 
Horse brand, 269. 
Horse Neck, 306. 
Howe, George, Lord, 261. 
Howe, John J., 360. 
Hudson, Henry, 145. 
Hull, Captain Isaac, 339. 
Humphreys, David, 340, 343. 
Humphreysville, 343. 
Huntington, Gov. Samuel, 326. 
Huntington, Long Island, 107, 135, 

138. 
Hutchinson, Gov. Thomas, 66. 
Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, 51, 84. 

Indian tribes, 26. 

Industrial development, 328 foil. 

Ingersoll, Jared, 286. 

Ingersoll, Jared, 352. 

Insurance, 338, 368, 393. 

Interlopers, 339. 

Iowa, 11. 

Iron, 3, 343-345, 358. 

Jackson, Dr. Abner, 355. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 80, 345, 346. 
Jerome, Chauncey, 359. 
Jesup, Col. T. S. 351. 
Johnson, Sir William, 259. 
Johnson, William S., 319, 327. 
Judges' Cave, the, 164. 
Jury, trial by, 189. 

Kerfoot, Dr. J. B., 355. 
Kieft, Gov. William, 146. 
Killing worth, 240. 
King Philip's war, 196. 
King's Province, 211. 
Kingston, Pa., 277. 
Kingston, R. I., 212, 213. 
Knight, Mrs., 249. 
Knox, Gen. Henry, 318. 



Labor Bureau, Connecticut, 365. 
Land, 75, 95; in New Hampshire, 94; 

individual ownership of, 96. 
Laud, 83, 108. 

Law, Gov. Jonathan, 81, 342. 
Lawrence, Henry, 110. 
Lead, 3. 
Ledyard, 52. 

Ledyard, Col. William, 312, 313. 
Lee, Gen. Charles, 294. 
Leete, Gov. William, 102, 162, 183, 189. 
Lefnngwell, Thomas, 113. 
Legal tender, 254, 257, 258. 
Legislature, 57(see General Assembly). 
Leisler, 251. 
Lexington, 291. 
Liberty, Sons of, 97. 
Limestone, 4. 
Limited Liability, 367. 
London Company, 7. 
Long Island, 2, 137, 148, 168;' becomes 

a part of New York, 188, 194; in the 

Revolution, 311. 
Long Wharf, the, 339. 
Loomis, James C, 376. 
Loudoun, the Earl of, 261. 
Louisburg, 258, 262. 
Ludlow, Roger, 18, 19, 56, 80, 154. 
Luzerne count}', '284. 
Lyman, General Phineas, 260, 262. 
Lyme, 267. 
Lynn, Mass., 137. 
Lyon, General Nathaniel, 381. 

McFingal, 288. 

Mackintosh, Sir James, 106. 

Madison, James, 325. 

Magistrates, 70, 76, 77; mode of elec- 
tion, 78 ; in New Haven, 93. 

Malbon, Richard, 92. 

Manchester, 342. 

Mansfield, 342. 

Mansfield, Gen. J. K. F., 381. 

Manufactures, 343, 345, 352, 357 foil. 
386-393. 

Marble, 4. 

Mason, John, 34, 113, 172, 216. 

Massachusetts Bay, 14, 17, 18, 61; 
democracy in, 64, 65; charter, 65, 
67, 131, 198; laws, 69; relations 
with Connecticut, 129; relations to 
the New England Union, 142-152; 
boundary disputes, 207, 271; in the 
Revolution, 288. 

Maverick, Rev. John, 18, 19. 

Mayflower, the, 63. 

Mechanics, 357 foil., 361 foil., 374 foil., 
386 foil. 

Meigs, Col. Return J., 304. 

Meriden, 337, 358. 



INDEX. 



425 



Methodist Church, 237, 352. 
Miantonoinoh, 28, 36, 47, 48, 50. 
Middletown, 2, 135, 136, 337, 355. 
Milborn, 252. 
Milford, 83, 240; origin, 83; people, 

84; purchase, 87; settlement, 88; 

organization, 93; burgesses, 103. 
Militia, 375. 
Mohawks, 27. 
Mohegan, 29. 
Mohegans, 53, 216. 
Momaugin, 87. 
Money, 248. 
Monk, Gen., 163. 
Mononotto, 43, 46. 
Montowese, 87. 
Montreal, 253. 
Montville, 54. 
Morris, Luzon B., 400. 
Mower, Gen. Jos. A., 381. 
Mules, 331. 

Nails, 3. 

Narragansett Bay, 14, 173, 210. 

Narragansett Indians, 28, 32, 46, 51, 
53, 212. 

Naugatuck River, 358. 

Navigation Act, 155. 

Neptune, the, 339. 

New Amsterdam, 14 ; becomes New 
York city, 188. 

Newark, N. J., 107, 138. 

New Britain, 358. 

New Connecticut, 273. 

New England, 1. 

New England Union, 102, 114, 116, 
143 ; difficulties with the Dutch, 147, 
152 ; nullification by Massachusetts, 
157 ; failure, 132, 157. 

Newgate, 301. 

New Hampshire, 271. 

New Haven, 2, 5, 10, 26, 61 ; origin, 
83 ; people, 84 ; settlement, 86 ; pur- 
chase, 87 ; early topography, 88 ; 
covenant, 89 ; constitution, 90 ; leg- 
islation, 98; name, 101 ; confedera- 
tion, 102 ; organization, 103 ; enters 
New England Union, 104 ; the Dela- 
ware venture, 146 ; phantom ship, 
155 ; proposal to migrate, 156 ; the 
regicides, 163 ; proclaims Charles 
II., 167 ; included in Connecticut 
charter, 173 ; resists, 175 ; weak- 
ness, 175 foil. ; yields, 188, 189 ; 
Yale at, 211 ; British at, 244, 308; 
capital, 270; city, 337-340; em- 
bargo, 346 ; convention, 348 ; manu- 
factures, 358; proposed negro col- 
lege, 370 ; representation in legisla- 
ture, 402. 



" New lights," 233, 236. 

New London, 5, 40, 135, 140, 337, 349 ; 

Arnold's raid, 312. 
Newman, Robert, 92. 
New Milford, 357. 
New tenor, 256. 
Newtown (Cambridge), 17. 
New York, 193, 197, 205, 207, 282; 

boundary, 272 ; in the Revolution, 

293, 303, 306 ; in the confederation, 

316, 318. 
New York city, 127, 188. 
Northampton, Mass., 232. 
Norwalk, 135, 136, 223, 309. 
Norwich, 48, 113, 135, 141, 217, 337, 

358. 
" Notions," 357. 
Nullification, the first, 157. 

Occom, Samson, 55. 

Ohio, 127. 

Oldham, John, 17, 31. 

Old tenor, 256. 

Olin, Dr. Stephen, 356. 

Owning the covenant, 227. 

Palmer, Nathan, 307. 

Paper currency, 250 foil. 

Parsons, J. C. 127. 

Patents, 362, 368. 

Patrick, Capt., 36, 42, 45, 150. 

Pawcatuck River, the, 210, 213. 

Peace party, the, 378. 

Peage, 248. 

Peddlers, 357. 

Peekskill, N. Y., 306. 

•' Pelham," 350. 

Penn, William, 274. 

Pennamites and Yankees, 283. 

Pennsylvania, 127, 273, 274, 284 (see 
Wyoming). 

Pequot country, the, 3, 59, 139, 209. 

Pequot Hill, 37. 

Pequot war, the, 34 foil. 

Pequots, the, 16, 28, 32, 42, 46, 52, 
209. 

Percival, J. G., 340. 

Peters, Gov. John S., 310. 

Peters, Rev. Samuel, 105 ; his " His- 
tory," 298 ; his "natural " history, 
299 ; returns to Connecticut, 310 ; 
death, 310. 

Peters, Rev. Thomas, 113. 

Philadelphia, 274. 

Philip's war, King, 196. 

Phillips, Rev. George, 18, 19. 

Phillips, Wendell, 19. 

Pierson, Rev. Abraham, 54, 107, 138. 

Pierson, Rev. Abraham, 240. 

Pillars, the seven, 90, 92. 



426 



INDEX. 



Pins, 361. 

Pitkin, Gov. William, 287. 

Pitt, William, 261. 

Plainfield, 267, 269. 

Plymouth Company, the, 6, 7, 8, 137, 
215. 

Plymouth colony, the, 14, 16 ; demo- 
cracy, 63. 

Pomfret, 261, 307. 

Population, 270, 329, 330, 367, 391, 
398. 

Ponderson, John, 92. 

Porter, Pres. Noah, 245. 

Port Royal, 253. 

Presbyterianism, 230, 232. 

Prices, regulation of, 100. 

Prison-ships, 298. 

Probate courts, 75, 336. 

Proclamation money, 258. 

Proprietors, 97. 

Prudden, Rev. Peter, 88. 

Puritans, the, 387. 

Putnam, Gen. Israel, 261, 263, 292, 
306, 307. 

Pynchon, Dr. I. R., 355. 

Pynchon, William, 18. 

Quakers, the, 175, 236. 
Quebec, 253, 262. 
Quinnipiack, 85. 
Quo warranto, 199. 

Railroads, 368. 

Randolph, Edward, 198, 211. 

Randolph, John, 331. 

Rasieres, De, 14. 

Rates, 137. 

Reading, 302, 306. 

Regicides, the, 163 foil. 

Republican party, the, 369. 

Reserve, the Western, 127, 282, 315. 

Revolver, the, 363. 

Rhode Island, 209 foil., 317. 

Richmond grant, the, 8. 

Ridgefield, 304. 

Rivington, James, 293. 

Roads, 125. 

Rogers, Commodore C. R. P., 381. 

Rogers, Commodore John, 381. 

Rossiter, Bray, 178. 

Rossiter, John, 178. 

Roxbury, 18. 

Ruyter, Admiral de, 155. 

Sachem's Head, 44. 
Saffery, 207. 
Salem, Mass., 261. 
Salisbury, 344. 

Saltonstall, Gov. Gurdon, 80. 
Saltonstall, Sir Richard, 110. 



Sandemanians, the, 346. 
Sassacus, 29, 30, 32, 46. 
Saugatuck, 303. 
Say and Sele grant, the, 8, 9, 23, 109 

108. 
Saybrook, 2, '23, 33, 135, 240, 349; 

name, 112 ; sold to Connecticut, 

115 ; Commencement at, 242. 
Saybrook platform, the, 231 foil.. 

237. 
Schenectady, N. Y., 251. 
Schools, 101, 267, 282, 328, 369. 
Seabury, Bishop, 238. 
Sears, Isaac, 293. 
Sedgwick, Gen. John, 381. 
Selden, John, 79. 
Selectmen, 76, 238, 332, 335, 354. 
Senate, 77, 354 ; of the United States. 

326. 
Sequin, 33. 
Sharp's rifle, 364. 
Sheep, 342, 343. 
Sherman, Gen. W. T., 381. 
Sherman, Roger, 319, 324, 327, 357. 
Sherman, Roger Minot, 351.J 
Sigourney, Mrs. L. H., 340. 
Silk, 342. 
Silver, 4. 

Simsbury, 3, 267, 300. 
Six Nations, the, 27. 
Slaves, 267. 
Slitting-mill, 344. 
Smith, Dr. A. W., 356. 
Smith, Dr. G. W., 355. 
Smith, Gov. John Cotton, 356. 
Smith, Nathaniel, 351. 
Society, church and, 60. 
Somers, John, 204. 
" Sons of Liberty," 97, 286. 
Southampton, L. I., 135, 138, 223. 
Southerton, 210. 
South Norwalk, 337. 
Southold, L. I., purchased, 88 ; ad- 
mission to New Haven, 106, 138: 

feeling in, 179. 
" Sow business," the, 68. 
Specie, 250. 

Spencer, Gen. Joseph, 292. 
Springfield, founded, 20, 25, 56; be- 

comes a Massachusetts town, 58. 

143, 208. 
Stamford, purchased, 87 ; feeling in. 

179. 
Stamp Act, the, 285 foil. 
" Stand-up Law," the, 353. 
State prison, the, 300. 
State sovereignty, 304, 305, 315, 316. 

323. 
Stedman, Gen. G. A., 381. 
Steinwehr, Gen. A. von, 381. 



INDEX. 



427 



Stiles, Pres. Ezra, 245, 334, 342, 346. 

Stirling grant, the, 137. 

Stone, Capt., 30. 

Stone, Rev. Samuel, 18, 19, 35, 123, 
228. 

Stonington, 37, 210, 293, 297, 349. 

Story, Judge, 66. 

Stoughton, William, 42. 

Stratford, 135, 235, 237. 

Strong, Rev. Nathan, 341. 

Stuyvesant, Gov. Peter, 147, 151, 185. 

Suffrage, 60, 75, 173, 174, 224, 226, 
332, 353, 354 ; in New Haven, 91, 
226; in Massachusetts, 66. 

Susquehanna Company, the, 275, 283. 

Swamp fight, the, 196, 212. 

Swift, Zephaniah, 351. 

Talcott, John, 57. 

Talcott, Joseph, 80. 

Tatobam, 29. 

Taxation, 78 ; in kind, 100, 249, 369 ; 
lists, 136, 137, 267, 368; church, 
224, 229, 231, 237, 354 ; and paper 
currency, 254 foil. 

Tennant, Rev. Gilbert, 232. 

Terry, Eli, 359. 

Terry, Gen. A. H., 381. 

Thames River, the, 5, 35. 

Ticonderoga, 262, 291. 

Tinware, 357. 

Tobacco culture, 398. 

Toleration party, the, 352, 353. 

Tories, 97, 298, 300, 302, 309, 310, 346. 

Totten, Dr. Silas, 355. 

Town-system, the, 6, 12, 58, 61, 75, 79, 
134, 135, 192, 268, 290, 305 ; in Mas- 
sachusetts, 66, 67 ; in New Haven, 
84, 102, 177; in Vermont, 272; in 
Pennsylvania, 278. 

"Town-born," 339. 

Township, the, 220, 268. 

Tracy, Uriah, 331. 

Tread well, John, 351. 

Treat, Gov. Robert, 196, 199-201. 

Treby, 204. 

Trinity College, 355. 

Trumbull, Benjamin, 288. 

Trumbull, Fort, 312. 

Trumbull, Gov. Jonathan, 286, 294. 

Trumbull, Gov. Jonathan, 81, 287. 

Trumbull, J. H., 71, 288. 

Trumbull, John, 287. 

Trumbull, John, 288, 340. 

Trumbull, H. C, 288. 

Trumbull, Lymau, 288. 

Tryon, Gov. William, 303, 307, 309. 

Turner, Nathaniel, 92, 94. 

Tyler, Gen. Daniel, 381. 

Tyler, Gen. R. O., 381. 



Uncas, 29, 35, 46, 53, 217. 

Underbill, Captain John, 38. 

Union, the American, 62, 263. 

Union, the New England, 102, 114, 
116, 143 ; difficulties with the Dutch, 
147, 152; nullification by Massachu- 
setts, 157 ; failure, 132, 157. 

United colonies, the, 49. 

Utica, N. Y., 274. 

Van Corlear, John, 15. 
Vane, Gov. Harry, 32, 33. 
Van Tromp, Admiral, 155. 
Van Twiller, Gov. Walter, 15. 
Vermont, 127, 136, 271, 273, 291. 
Vernon, Admiral, 256. 
Virginia, 280, 315, 320, 323. 

Wadsworth, Captain Joseph, 195, 201. 

Walker, Admiral Hovenden, 253. 

Wallingford, 267. 

Wampum, 248. 

Ward, 204. 

Warham, Rev. John, 18, 19. 

Wars, 250 foil. 

Warwick grant, 8, 9, 109, 115, 118. 

Warwick Neck, 214. 

Washington College, 355. 

Washington, George, 294, 295, 311, 317, 
343. 

Waterbury, 267, 337, 358, 359. 

Water power, 360. 

Watertown, 17. 

Webb, Gen., 261. 

Webster, Gov. John, 228. 

Wells, Thomas, 80. 

Welles, Gideon, 381. 

Went worth, Gov. Benning, 272. 

Wentworth, Strafford, Earl of, 108, 
115. 

Wesleyan University, 355. 

Westchester, 180. 

Western Reserve, the, 127, 282, 315. 

West Haven, 308. 

Westmoreland, 277, 279. 

West Point, N. Y., 306. 

Wethersfield, 11, 21, 22, 33, 56, 312 , 
dissensions in, 93, 134, 164, 223; 
Commencement at, 242 ; State pri- 
son, 301. 

Whalley, Edward, 163 foil. 

" Whapperknocker," the, 299. 

Wharf, the Long, 339. 

Wheaton, Dr., 355. 

Wheelock, Ebenezer, 55. 

Whitefield, Rev. Henry, 88. 

Whitefield, Rev. Henry, 232, 234. 

Whiting, John, 81. 

Whiting, Joseph, 81. 

Whiting, Nathan, 260. 



428 



INDEX. 



Whiting, Rev. Joseph, 228. 

Whitney, Eli, 363. 

Whitneyville, 363. 

Wickford, R. I., 185, 210. 

Wigglesworth, Rev. Michael, 228. 

William and Mary, 208, 251. 

Williams, Dr . John, 355. 

Williams, Rev. Elisha, 242. 

Williams, Roger, 32. 

Wilson, James, 326. 

Winchester Arms Co., 364. 

Windham, 299. 

Windsor, 11, 15, 22, 25, 56. 

Winslow, Gov. Edward, 14. 

Winthrop, Fitz John, 160, 202, 204, 
252. 

Winthrop, Jr., John, 8, 23, 77,80,110, 
343 ; at Pequot, 140 ; governor, 160 ; 
sent to England, 166 ; obtains a 
charter, 177 foil., 210. 

Winthrop, Sr., John, 14, 58, 110 ; let- 
ter to Hooker, 66. 

Winthrop, Theodore, 380. 

Winthrop, Wait, 202. 



Wolcott, Henry, 158. 

Wolcott, Jr., Henry, 71. 

Wolcott, Oliver, 294. 

Wolcott, Oliver, 352. 

Wolfe, Gen. James, 261. 

Wood, John, 245. 

Woodbury, 267. 

Woodward, 207. 

Wool, 342, 343. 

Woolsey, Pres. T. D., 245. 

Wooster, Gen. David, 292, 303, 304. 

Wyllys, George, 81. 

Wyllys, Hezekiah, 81. 

Wyllys, Samuel, 81. 

Wyllys Family, the, 123, 161, 201. 

Wyoming, migration to, 127 ; settle- 
ment, 275 foil. ; massacre, 278 ; 
failure, 279. 

Yale College, 101, 238 foil; Univer- 
sity, 247. 
Yale, David, 158. 
Yale, Elihu, 241. 
" Yankee Notions," 357. 



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